The Encounter (NHB Modern Plays) - Softcover

The stuff of a twisting, turning, thoroughly engrossing fairytale... McBurney captures the metaphysical spirit - as well as the pulse-quickening heart - of the experience with this head-turning, spellbinding show. --Telegraph

Extraordinary... McBurney brings his story thrillingly, intimately alive... It is an incredible story, beautifully written... primarily, a cracking yarn but it sucks in bigger ideas at every narrative twist. Is it possible to communicate without words? What good are possessions? Could modern man remove himself from time? What will become of these tribes if the oilmen win?... McBurney and Complicite are a man and a company incapable of remaining within known theatrical boundaries. --Independent

Storytelling gets an extreme workout in Simon McBurney's multi-layered account of photographer Loren McIntyre's first encounter with the indigenous Mayoruna people, deep in the Amazon rain forest. McIntyre's 1969 journey has been stewing inside McBurney since he first read Petru Popescu's account of it 20 years ago. And in his telling of it, it becomes first the broader encounter between ancient and modern civilisations and, on a much deeper level, a personal encounter for his audience with the atavistic notions which we all share as human animals... He talks of memory, the place of story in creating history, whether the modern notion that there is an absolute reality can be true and how time might not, in fact, be linear. --The Stage

A highlight of this year's Edinburgh International Festival, this one-man show bursts with colour and life, a seamless blend of technology and storytelling...The Encounter is about the stories through which we see the world and the illusion of linear time... A tour de force that shows contemporary theatre at its most immersive and thought provoking. --Financial Times

In 1969 Loren McIntyre, a National Geographic photographer, found himself lost among the people of the remote Javari Valley in Brazil. It was an encounter that was to change his life, bringing the limits of human consciousness into startling focus. Inspired by the book Amazon Beaming by Petru Popescu, The Encounter traces McIntyre's journey into the depths of the Amazon rainforest, incorporating innovative technology into a solo performance to build a shifting world of sound. The Encounter opened at the Edinburgh International Festival in August 2015 performed by Simon McBurney, and received its London premiere at the Barbican in February 2016 before embarking on a world tour.