The award winning "The Encounter" by Complicite on onassis.org

We are delighted to be partnering with Complicité to broadcast "The Encounter" online. The show, described as ‘a tour de force’ by "Financial Times" and ‘one of the most fully-immersive theater pieces ever created’ by "New York Times" played a sold out run at London’s Barbican Theatre in 2016, but on 19 May at 19:00 the show will be available online and you can watch it until 25 May at 21:00 on our website for free.

Are you ready for a first: a synaesthetic experience which invites us to commune as never before with nature, time, memory, culture—and hence with ourselves?

A restless explorer of theatrical narrative, new technology and audiovisual form, founder of the legendary Complicite theatre company, which has defined and redefined the contemporary international scene since 1983, the dramatist, director and actor Simon McBurney returns at the Onassis Stegi, this time online.

"The Encounter", a solo recital by McBurney, is Complicite’s latest production, an international co-production with the Edinburgh International Festival, the Onassis Stegi, the Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne and another three important European theaters.

It all started with a book McBurney read twenty years ago and never forgot: "Amazon Beaming" by the Rumanian author Petru Popescu. The work relates the true story of a "National Geographic" photojournalist, Loren McIntyre, who in 1969 disappeared into the rainforests between Peru and Brazil on an assignment to find the mythical source of the Amazon. Rescued by the members of an unknown tribe, he was initiated through their rituals into a strange, consciousness-expanding experience.

McBurney promises us a similar experience. All he asks is that we wear headphones in a playful ritual which is clearly of 21st-century provenance. And that’s because the distinguished sound-designer Gareth Fry (London Olympics, 2012) uses advanced binaural technology to create a 3D-audio soundscape of the primeval—and now endangered—Amazon ecosystem; it’s as though we’re right there in the Earth’s lung.