LONDON — When Emma Cole, an expert in ancient Greek theater at the University of Bristol, recently wove through a maze of apartments, back streets and squares in two huge warehouses in south London, she excitedly pointed out every nod to Greek mythology she’s given. passed, including a shrine to the goddess Artemis and graffiti written in Linear B, an ancient form of Greek script.
In the past year, the buildings were transformed into the setting for ‘The Burnt City’, a retelling of the fall of Troy, the latest show from British immersive theater company Punchdrunk. And while Cole, the show’s historical advisor, had provided crucial insight into the production, Punchdrunk put his own spin on it.
One of the warehouses, for example, was supposed to be the ancient city of Troy, but it had a sake bar, French bistro, and nightclub complete with black leather couches and pounding techno music. And neither room contained a huge wooden Trojan horse.
Cole, 33, said she didn’t mind the modern makeover. “Every time I come here I get so excited,” she said, adding: “It’s a way I never imagined these stories could be told. Punchdrunk invites everyone to see them from a whole new angle.”
Theater companies such as Punchdrunk — best known for “Sleep No More,” the popular New York City immersive spectacle based primarily on “Macbeth” — have long consulted academics to keep their shows historically accurate and to give their cast insight into script. Still, Cole’s involvement with “The Burnt City” continued.
During the development of the show, Cole spent four weeks with the directors, Felix Barrett and Maxine Doyle, fleshing out each character’s journey and giving them access to “more than” 100 ancient Greek texts for inspiration. She lectured on Euripides’ “Hecuba” and Aeschylus’ “Agamemnon” – two tragedies at the heart of the show – and attended rehearsals every day so the cast could gain her knowledge. She also introduced the company to John Bennet, the director of the British School in Athens, who translated English sentences into Linear B.
Doyle called Cole’s involvement “a gift.” Typically a classicist “comes in for an hour to do a Q. and A. and then you’re left alone,” she said, so having “an oracle” at their disposal gave them confidence in the authenticity of the show. Barrett agreed, saying that even if viewers overlooked the little references — like the bottles of sake named after rivers of the underworld — they’d appreciate the nuanced environment that had been created.
Sarah Dowling, who plays Hecuba, the Trojan Queen, said that “Emma’s broad knowledge really helps the job.” Dowling said she tapped Cole several times, including for a scene where Hecuba prays to the gods for help defending Troy. Cole sent her a myriad of prayers to choose from, saving Dowling her only fallback: Google. “Then God knows what we would get!” said Dowling.
“The Burnt City”, which runs until December 4, has been eagerly anticipated in Britain as it marks Punchdrunk’s first major show since “The Drowned Man” in 2013, when the company turned a former postal sorting office into a scrap of years. 60 Hollywood for a separate adaptation of Georg Büchner’s ‘Woyzeck’.
Barrett, one of the directors, said he had wanted to create a production “Charting the Fall of Troy” for more than a decade, in which the story is told from the perspectives of both Troy and Mycenae – the ancient city whose people According to legend, Troy fired — but that his company had only now found room to bring that vision to life.
As in other Punchdrunk productions, the action in “The Burnt City” unfolds largely without words and often with dance. The audience, wearing masks, enters the show through a series of rooms intended to look like an exhibition of ancient Greek pottery, but are then free to explore the two worlds. Many choose to follow one character everywhere, such as Agamemnon – the Greek commander who oversees the fall of Troy only to go back to Mycenae and be murdered by his wife.
While touring the set, Cole explained that many ancient Greek playwrights used dance in their plays so they wouldn’t have been confused by Punchdrunk’s show. Greek tragedy writers were “driven by innovation,” she added, and they liked to write new versions of old myths. “What’s going on here is exactly the same ghost,” she said.
Cole said she fell in love with Greek myths at age 10, but didn’t appreciate their ability to stay relevant until college for their ability to stay relevant by grappling with issues like war and tragedy. Since then she has studied how directors reinvent old myths.
Before ‘The Burnt City’, she recommended several productions, including ‘Kabeiroi’ – a small Punchdrunk production staged on the streets of London, which was loosely based on fragments of a long-lost play from ancient Greece – but she said that she’d never been this deep. if they are involved in the process. Her account to the directors of a coming-of-age ritual in ancient Greece in which women dressed as bears made the show.
Her influence is also evident in some performances, Cole said, as many actors have peppered her with questions as they develop their characters. Most of those questions were obvious, she said, but one of the more unusual questions came in March, when an actor who played Hades, the king of the underworld, asked her for ancient Greek quotes that dealt with “time as a concept.” .
Most of those details will, of course, fly over the minds of onlookers. “What the hell was that about?” said Khairil Hodgson, 41, as he emerged from a performance. Hodgson said he was “sure there was something to do with ancient Greece somewhere,” although he hadn’t yet figured it out. But, he said, he’d fix it soon. He was such a fan of Punchdrunk’s work that he booked tickets to four more shows.
As Cole made her way through the maze-like set, past apartments meant to represent the underworld and posters advertising performances by ancient Greek musicians and dancers, she said she expected such reactions.
It didn’t matter if people didn’t understand the references to classical myths, she said. But “with my academic hat on, I’d like nothing more than for someone to go out afterwards and think, ‘I’m going to read the plays now,’ and then start researching.”
