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Sarah Dowling / Punchdrunk

Encountered in CPPM: Term 3

GUEST ARTIST PROFILE

CPPM ENCOUNTER

Term:

Workshop practitioner or representative:

Associated company, collective or institution:

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

[TO BE COMPLETED FROM VERIFIED SOURCES]

ARTISTIC PRACTICE

Primary disciplines:

Geographical and cultural context:

Principal artistic concerns:

Methods, media or performance languages:

CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Beginning of professional practice:

Important early project, company or collaboration:

Major later developments:

PUBLIC RECOGNITION MILESTONE

Year:

Specific event, production, award, appointment or institutional recognition:

Scale of recognition: local / national / international

Why this moment represents a change in public visibility:

Source:

Confidence: verified / interpretation / still to verify

SELECTED WORKS

[TO BE COMPLETED]

CPPM CONNECTION

Nature of the workshop encounter:

Material to add later from protocols and Weekly Questions:

SARAH DOWLING / PUNCHDRUNK — CPPM SOURCE POSITION

CPPM TEACHING POSITION

The documented CPPM workshop teacher was:

SARAH DOWLING.

MAXINE DOYLE WAS PRESENT.

Do not attribute the teaching directly to Maxine Doyle.

COMPANY CONTEXT

The workshop was situated in relation to Punchdrunk and immersive performance.

The available source does not establish that every exercise belongs to one official and fixed Punchdrunk training system.

Use:

SARAH’S WORKSHOP PRACTICE

when referring to exercises documented by participants.

Use:

PUNCHDRUNK CONTEXT

when referring to the wider immersive-performance environment.

DOCUMENTED PRACTICE FIELD

The available accounts describe a workshop arc involving:

SOURCE STATUS

No complete teacher-authored protocol was located.

The reconstruction comes principally from participant reflections by:

Their accounts contain valuable practical evidence but also interpretation.

Do not convert interpretation into Sarah’s direct discourse.

TERM 3 DRIVE ENRICHMENT — PUNCHDRUNK / SARAH DOWLING / MAXINE DOYLE / FELIX BARRETT

CENTRAL PREMISE

Punchdrunk places the audience at the centre of action. It builds parallel theatrical universes in which spectators may forget they are an audience. The spectator’s movement, attention, choice and perception become dramaturgical material.

SOURCE PROFILE AND NAMING CAUTION

The presentation describes Felix Barrett as Drama graduate of the University of Exeter, artistic director, theatre-maker, founder of Punchdrunk and innovator in immersive/site-specific performance. A separate workshop summary describes Punchdrunk as co-founded by Maxine Doyle and Felix Barrett. Preserve both:

Maxine Doyle is kept distinct from Felix Barrett and Sarah Dowling. Her creative process is a dialogue among performers, dancers, space, light and sound. Non-theatrical spaces inform design and choreography; space participates in movement itself rather than serving as a set added afterward.

Maxine’s Q&A material: Liverpool background; first-generation artist; began dancing around age 12 after seeing Phoenix Dance Company; trained at Rambert Centre and Laban Centre; interest in choreography and workshops/independent practice; founded First Person Dance Company; early touring work including It’s Only a Game Show; difficult/toxic early collaborations; met Felix in 1999; shared Pina Bausch, Alfred Hitchcock and immersive storytelling references.

An early Sleep No More version is dated by the Q&A source to 2003, based on Macbeth in a derelict school. Devices included masks, looped narrative, sensorial environment and non-linear spectatorship. The source records approximately £25,000 Arts Council England support for early Punchdrunk development.

VISIBLE / CONCEPTUAL CONSTELLATION

Keep the wider field readable through these working areas in Notes or existing children: immersive dramaturgy; audience/mask/gaze; space/architecture/frame; non-linear narrative and loops; sensorial dramaturgy; workshop Days 1–6; Sarah’s practice; Maxine’s choreography/spectatorship; media/resources.

Spectatorship

Ask what watching does to the watcher, what anonymity and proximity do, what happens when performers cannot read a spectator’s face, and what happens when spectators can leave one narrative and enter another.

Site distinctions

Maxine questions overuse and commercialisation of “immersive.” Craft remains essential. Safety, audience movement, crowd management and building limitation are not external problems; they are part of immersive dramaturgy.

Maxine’s Q&A also records motherhood in her late thirties, approximately 29 weeks away from home in 2023, independent work with Gothenburg Dance Company and Ballet de Genève, a sense that Punchdrunk eclipsed part of her individual identity, and a movement toward reclaiming/extending authorship. Future projects mentioned include Venice Biennale-related work, “16 tables / 16 answers,” Shenzhen and Australia. Do not expand beyond the source.

SARAH DOWLING — SERIOUS PLAY / PLAY SERIOUS

Sarah’s fields include performing, movement direction, choreography, immersive theatre and reintroducing immersive principles into theatre space. Her workshop uses characters sourced from several Euripides plays, centred on the aftermath of the fall of Troy, as mythic substrate without linear staging of Euripides.

Typical working pattern: morning contact work/one-to-ones, ensemble work, approximately one hour physical warm-up and one hour improvisation; break; evening creative task and sharing. Physical preparation → open investigation → specific creative task → sharing/feedback.

WORKSHOP DAYS 1–3

Day 1 — observation and sensorial investigation

Pair introductions: one speaks continuously about day/expectations while the other listens; listener shares three remembered things; roles swap. Observe posture, unconscious mirroring, smiling, facial expression and micro-behaviour. Principle: observe.

Working principles: not judging—just moving; body likes simple instructions; reduce things down; set something then work with it; non-analytic setting; another person can move you in unimaginable ways; echoing can be visceral.

Begin on floor and investigate texture, weight, contact and surface; soft and strong touch communicate differently. Move floor → standing while investigating space, light, surfaces, textures and senses. Become your own health-and-safety observer: how does architecture support weight, what can/cannot hold you? Movement, text and persona may arise by staying with place.

Explore leg/ronde des jambes, balance, partner-directed movement, smooth falling, group directional awareness, arm circles, stone-throwing gesture and isolations. Pairs create three movements, teach and combine them. Do not merely copy; feel the partner’s movement. Perfect unison is not the goal. Immersive showing removes fixed stage, spectator line and linear order; the stage relocates.

Blindfolded pair work: leader eyes open, blindfolded hand above leader’s hand, no grabbing, slow travel. Blindfolded person facilitates their own experience; leader supports, holds space and protects. Keywords: listening, connection, communication, negotiation.

Day 2 — fold, extend, play and one-to-one

Investigate folding, extension, breath, joints, softness and relation to floor. Scores include starfish → fetus → seated open-leg position; fetus → arm under body → unfold. Avoid crushing; find true softness; soften into floor; use sit bones; find an individual version.

Partners assist through soft/strong touch and varied body surfaces while mover remains leader. Getting lost is permitted. Warm-up vocabulary becomes improvisational material. Participants choose inside play or observing; imagination may enter; when something emerges, go deeper.

Asphodelus Field: imagine occupying a state for a year, century or millions of years; state becomes access to belonging. In one-to-one, half performers/half spectators; performers begin in the state, spectators travel to facilitate their own experience. Tools: proximity, gaze and touch. Sarah’s building prompts include someone watching, architecture, surfaces, frames, appearing/disappearing, singing, secrets, beauty, woodwork, scale, beetle-like movement and safe hiding. Identify vulnerable, safe and powerful places; create a sensorial one-to-one; ask whether spectator is invited or discovers performer.

Day 3 — contact improvisation, tension and frame

Contact improvisation explicitly references Steve Paxton. In trios, one receives with eyes closed and releases weight while two support, fold, extend and activate; receiver gradually moves and supporters follow. Later receiver stands; touch proposes information but does not dictate movement; partners may simply hold/protect the space. First contact builds trust; engage muscle but not too much; everyone holds tension somewhere; there is no mythical neutral body.

Lecoq seven stages of tension: 0 nothingness; 1 jellyfish/catatonic; 2 Californian; 3 neutral/stage manager/exact effort; 4 alert/curious/aware/directional; 5 suspense/reactive/spy/higher stakes; 6 opera/tension explodes outward; 7 silent/ecstasy/silent screen/stasis/maximum tension. Move through levels individually, in pairs and freely, then integrate character. Sarah first acts as nurse injecting states; performers later choose independently.

This is investigation and practice, not performance witnessing. Failed connection is inevitable material. Ask what muscular tension communicates and whether audience need can be expressed physically alone.

Frame means boundary, condition, limit, focus and act of consciousness. Explore architectural frames, mental/physical boundaries, depth, length and height. Test how far one can move before frame loses power. Make one clear visible frame and one less obvious/conceptual frame. No drama, no decoration: boundary investigation itself can be performance.

DAY 4 — MASK / GAZE / FRAME / TEXT / NON-LINEARITY

Date: 02.07.2026. A separate major workshop node records this material.

Micro-speed: pairs establish mental connection and move millimetre by millimetre through/around each other; locate a freeze point and mine one moment. Improvisation becomes set material: extract, slow, examine, fix and reuse.

Half performers/half masked audience investigate proximity and whether audience finds performer or performer leads audience. The mask creates anonymity, reducing self-consciousness and enabling closer watching, but may make performer feel more exposed. The mask can expose rather than hide.

Because face is less legible, performers cannot rely on facial feedback, permission or response. Gaze, posture, proximity and body language become amplified; reflexes must be reworked. Keep unresolved tension between voyeurism and empathy. Watching is political: who watches, is watched, remains anonymous, approaches, withdraws or is seen watching?

The workshop summary proposes masking as potentially allowing people who feel judged in cultural spaces to enter spectatorship with greater anonymity, associated in the source with a “left progressive” equality space. Preserve as source interpretation, not universal fact. Darkness can equalise the visible audience, increase anonymity and intensify ghostly/surreal qualities. Lighting choreographs spectatorship.

Mask design responds to comfort, feedback and narrative, with Greek chorus and Hecuba/Agamemnon associations. Audience can function as anonymous chorus. Organic guidance replaces explicit ushering: performer movement, light, spatial attraction, proximity, sound and sensory signals choreograph flow without appearing choreographed. Cultural differences between China, the US and UK are workshop speculation, not universal fact.

Material must be robust enough for attention shifts, movement, proximity, partial viewing, repetition and interruption. Text/frame exercise: approximately 15 minutes; associate text with frame, frame-first or text-first; perform text inside frame with existing material; ask about body’s relation to frame. Text may be read from phone/paper or played as recording, but timbre and vocal texture remain central. Frame can be destination; spectator may arrive at it or find performer.

Text may be foreground or environmental background, altering performer’s status as character, performer, narrator or abstract figure. Linear text is difficult to inhabit in immersive dramaturgy; build a cohesive world capable of carrying linear narrative through non-linear experience. Collage fragments into poetic field of relations. Hour-long loops meet new spectators each cycle; loop is not simple repetition because bodies, timing and performer state differ. Resets must be crafted through object repositioning, body-memory cues and spatial transitions while remaining inside the world.

Sensory guidance includes smell, stairs, masked figures and spatial cues. Shared reading can make collaborative meaning; physical sensation may parallel narrative, such as “weight of the ghost.” Feedback examples: Anna’s scattergun character through environmental exploration; Yuli’s looped performance and memory cycles. Painting reference: Hieronymus Bosch, The Crucifixion of St Julia.

Practical logistics are dramaturgical: hygiene, antiseptic wipes, insufficient masks for approximately 32 participants, own masks, fabric/white sheets and avoiding plastic. Wooden floor means no shoes; removing/putting on shoes can become ritual transition, while outdoors changes logistics. Saturday showing is an open class, not formal performance; approximate plan: Maxine Q&A 09:30–10:30, warm-up/improvisation/creation and showing around 18:00.

RESOURCES

Official site: https://www.punchdrunk.com/

Maxine Doyle: https://maxinedoyle.com/

Sarah/workshop Padlet: https://padlet.com/zmt5pqnvr7/venice-and-the-river-styx-d42dqza0r9d1d52h

Maxine Q&A audio: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17K5v0MPREg7qw25TPxRUOzpbcSnXOaA2/view

Lecoq audio / Day 3 tension: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M02_XMMdyjhnWSCYrwWFQFJ_TFdrjGi0/view

Punchdrunk presentation / possible visual anchor: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vy_j56zA7vn0We8RyvRK-A_XbLc3VUAR/view

Day 4 duo + masked observer: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q9KFA1Hu_iMLDgPYwC2ipla5qyZBsFBI/view

Day 4 painting exercise: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HOcBUTI9X3k9tLE4n-1saYP1pMbURzyV/view

Day 4 mask conversation: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bvCwYgetbyLxOspS-MgStVdBP9tQAo_b/view

Day 4 text exercise conversation: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iPfBO7TZKsqZ_4QSMGw5L6LzaYvyg6wk/view

Day 4 text feedback: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WmV9gKQz0Xw_XVetSEE2o4JSI2CiSBJJ/view

Daily feedback: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u3BTNq4k7QQzGZm7pHnQpL4vpFk1yiPz/view