He's already an established name, but maybe it's worth giving a bit of context and shamefully assuming I was invited to a play at the Barbican to celebrate the birthday of a dear friend, and got carried away by life's speed in London. When I actually sat down to see it, there were no reference points in my mind whatsoever, I had no idea about who Simon McBurney was, or the buzz around The Encounter.
In a world so saturated with images, it was incredibly powerful to focus on hearing. Having worked in broadcasting and grown up going to rave parties on special occasions, I definitely have a deep connection with sound. The headphones given to the audience did create an intimate setting, and as in the old days of radio, sounds were created with random objects to illustrate specific scenarios.
Simon McBurney went back to an ancestral way of storytelling, transmitted from one generation to another through our voice, using technology to enhance sound effects. The way he delivers is so visceral, he becomes the character so completely, that we're all transported into a psychedelic journey.
He brings to life the true story of a National Geographic photographer - Loren McIntyre - who was lost in a remote area of Brazil in 1969, leading to a startling encounter that changed his life forever, much like Bruce Parry's experience with the Penan tribe. By bringing an alternating narrative with the present day and elements of his own personal life (McBurney's daughter is the only other voice in the play), he adds a layer of meaning and clearly raises poignant questions.
How we live and what we believe are put under a different light, as if we're being reminded of something we lost along the way. At the end, the audience felt silent for brief moments before standing in ovation. McBurney then presents himself as a messenger of the chief of a tribe in the Amazon he met himself. The message was to alert his people (all of us in the so-called civilised world) to what is happening there, the destruction of their home which turns out to be what BBC named as 'the lungs of the planet', so basically our home too.