British Actor Richard Katz Gets In Your Head For Complicite's Sonic Safari 'The Encounter'

Every theatre company hopes for a hit, but every so often a show comes along that draws such incandescent praise, shouldering the sheer weight of that expectation can be nerve-shredding. British theatre troupe Complicite have had more than a few barnstormers over the course of its 33-years presenting original, often experimental stage works, but its most recent production, The Encounter, ranks amongst the company's most superlative efforts, having earnt rave reviews during sold-out seasons in London, New York and several other major cities around the world. Pushing the stakes higher still, the show features just one solitary actor, whose lynchpin performance is make or break. So, no pressure then for British actor Richard Katz, the man tasked with bringing this eagerly anticipated and much hyped show to Australia. Despite this audacious responsibility, Katz admits he's "remarkably calm about it".

"I really thought I'd find getting up in front of several hundred people by myself more terrifying than being in Romeo & Juliet, or something more traditional. But there's a load of really technical things I have to manage during the show and that keeps you incredibly focused. In a funny way, it takes the pressure off a bit in terms of nerves because, there's just no room to think about that kind of thing," Katz explains. "You have to be very Zen about it, because if something goes wrong you have to let go of it very quickly. It really is a solo show - I can't rely on someone coming in and going, 'My Lord, the King is here,' or whatever if something goes awry."

Directed by revered elder statesman of British theatre and Complicite's co-founder, Simon McBurney, The Encounter is a retelling of National Geographic photographer Loren McIntyre's experiences meeting an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon rainforest in 1969. Of course, this culture clash narrative boasts plenty of dramatic meat on its bones, but it's this production's technical wizardry that has made it such a box office boom. Using a sophisticated array of head-shaped binaural microphones, which capture sound in three dimensions, the audience are immersed in an auditory hallucination, receiving The Encounter's boundary-busting soundscape via a pair of headphones.

"We are more connected and yet more separate than we've ever been. We're not very good at being attentive to things."

For Katz, the use of this cutting-edge audio offers a unique opportunity for a stage actor. "You can be so subtle. So incredibly subtle," he reveals. "I can literally whisper, talk with barely any voice at all, and the audience will hear it loud and clear. It's very like movie acting in a lot of ways. I can distil all that feeling into the smallest little impulse and it feels very real and very easy to generate fresh every night." The supped-up intimacy this carefully crafted sound design offers is not just a boon for a performer, Katz notes. "We're bringing the audience into this world in such a way that I can forget they're there. Actually, in a funny kind of way, the show works best when I'm not worried about how I'm connecting to the audience. The people who have made this show, and I do include myself in that number - we're really looking after you. We've built this environment that makes communication so easy that, as a performer, I don't have to stress about your experience. As long as your cans are safely on your ears, you will get everything."

Perhaps even more remarkable is the visual economy with which this show communicates its story, stripped bare of the imposing and complex set elements one might expect from such a well-credentialed production. Far from feeling hollow, Katz believes this pared-back aesthetic allows the audience greater freedom to individually engage.

"You can think of it like a bedtime story. We tell you about this amazing thing that happened and then the audience can give their imaginations free rein. There's a really powerful filter on a narrative when you ask the audience to do some of the work, and if every detail is spoon fed, then it gets in the way of that," he insists. "The great advantage of the headphones is that we can really get inside your head and make the experience very personal. The power of theatre is being able to witness a moment of change or revelation, and I think this show is incredibly powerful in the way it allows the audience to see that. They share the exact same experience as the actor because this binaural tech puts you right in the middle of it."

Beyond its practical plus points, this innovative mode of audience engagement also acts to enhance The Encounter's subtexts, exploring themes of otherness, isolation and empathy. "This show speaks about loneliness and what it means to be separate or more specifically, separate amongst other people," Katz says. 

"We are more connected and yet more separate than we've ever been. We're not very good at being attentive to things. Any storyteller wants their audience's undivided attention, but I think, in a way, that's naive. In a big space, I can't make you look where I want you to look. If you suddenly decide that my chair or some corner of the set is more interesting than I am, you might look at that for half an hour while I'm fucking around, acting my heart out on the other side of the stage. So, in a more traditional context I have no power over that, but what the headphones allow us to do is maintain that bond with the audience. You can go off into your own world, and that's fine because we have total confidence in the world that we're creating; we never lose contact."

Complicite present The Encounter, 18 - 28 Jan, Sydney Opera House, part of the Sydney Festival
 2 - 10 Feb, Malthouse Theatre
16 - 25 Feb, His Majesty's Theatre, Perth, part of the Perth International Arts Festival
7 - 11 Mar, Adelaide Festival Centre, part of the Adelaide Festival