Twenty years ago Simon McBurney was given a book.

Written by a Romanian who escaped the Ceaușescu regime to reinvent himself as a Los Angeles screenwriter, the book, Amazon Beaming, tells the story of photographer Loren McIntyre, who, in 1969, found himself lost amongst the remote people of the Javari Valley, on the border between Brazil and Peru. It was an encounter that changed his life: bringing the limits of human consciousness into startling focus.

Taking Petru Popescu’s account of McIntyre’s journey as its compass and using binaural technology to build an intimate and shifting world of sound, Complicite’s new production is a set of encounters with nature, with time, and with our own consciousness.

McBurney holds us enthralled

The Scotsman

The Encounter is a tour de force that shows contemporary theatre at its most immersive and thought provoking

Financial Times

More reviews

A Complicite co-production with Edinburgh International Festival, the Barbican London, Onassis Cultural Centre – Athens, Schaubühne Berlin, Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne and Warwick Arts Centre and supported by Sennheiser and The Wellcome Trust.