Tepusiti 𐀳𐀢𐀯𐀴 @te-pu-si-ti - Tumblr Blog

August 30, 2023 - Sake bar

Words are never really adequate, are they? For conveying all of the... the specificity. The individual specificity you find everywhere you look. Every thing in its time and its place, unique. Unlike any other.

Hades is telling me that my work is futile.

He's right, of course. Words can never capture the whole of what I'm experiencing. They never could.

But I've got to try. All I can do is fail as little as possible. If I can preserve one fraction of one moment, if I can bottle up my memory and share it with someone else, even if imperfectly... It's worth doing.

Because Hades might have eternity, but we do not.

my-burnt-city

sometimes it's been two and a half years since your show closed, but you've finally got around to getting the perfect commemorative tattoo

Lander 23

It's fun. I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a great time playing hide & seek in that lushly detailed space.

But if it wasn't Punchdrunk, and it wasn't there, would I care anything about it?

Not really. It's pricey for what it is, the game mechanics are basic, and there's no story to speak of. It's got adrenaline, but not emotion.

We are officially out of previews, and it still feels rough around the edges. Or, really, it feels uneven: some bits are lovely and polished, and some bits seem to have been slapped together.

And I was really hoping they would give us a story. That's what sets PD apart.

And where there may be hints of something under the surface, there's no opportunity to dig deeper. At TBC, I always felt that I would be rewarded for paying attention, for doing research, for learning more about the world. I always felt assured that there was more to find, more connections to draw, more to learn, even if I didn't yet understand it. Now, when the set is literally pulled from another story to use in this one, I feel no such confidence that anything is intentional or worth delving into.

I'll be back, I'm sure. But it will be because of Troy, not because of Lander. It will be because of what was, not what is or will be.

#punchdrunk #immersive theatre #lander 23

my-burnt-city

i've been a devoted punchdrunk fan since 2007 and literally the only thing about lander 23 that appeals to me is the opportunity to be back in troy, even though it's a completely different story genre and sounds like it makes zero sense that it's taking place in troy. obviously felix can do what he wants and no one gets to make his decisions but him, but live-action video games are not what his core audience wants and it sucks for me specifically that my eighteen-and-a-half-years-long love affair with this incredible theatre company feels like we're having a little break while we try seeing other people, but maybe we're not going to get back together after the break this time (although of course i am going to hold out hope forever that we may find our mutual spark again, and i expect i will book lander 23 at some point, it's just extremely low priority right now)

#yep

hoziernatural

She's still there, our city.

Once invaded and conquered night after night, now we finally bear witness to her barrenness.

The souls have fled. The eternity of the underworld has run out. The shades, perhaps, are free.

And I'm still trapped there, turning a corner expecting to run into an old friend.

The

McKithan · McKinnon · McKittrick

Hotel

#sleep no more #punchdrunk #immersive theatre #sleep no more seoul #sleep no more shanghai #sleep no more nyc

He tells me the difference between the living and the immortal and he tells me about circles and cycles and he tells me about time flowing like a river you can never step into twice. He tells me how it is nothing and everything; nothing to us, everything to him.

And I've heard it all before - not in so many words, but they resonate at the same frequency which cracks my heart like a glass.

So that's how my weekend went

#it's not a spoiler if you don't know what I'm talking about~#sleep no more #sleep no more Seoul #sam booth I will never emotionally recover from this

#sleep no more #sleep no more seoul #punchdrunk #immersive theatre #Youtube

valtsv

thinking about the ethics of prophecy and its role as a narrative tool of coercion and control again

valtsv

like. if you're beholden to a set of conditions that must either be followed or subverted in order to produce a favourable outcome or avoid unfavourable consequences (or led to believe you are), subject to the decree of a higher authority whose statements you are expected to accept as the absolute, unbiased, factual truth, and structure your existence in accordance with, is that not just prison? you can't convince me that isn't just an elaborate psychologically abusive prison.

valtsv

it's not enough to simply defy the prophecy we need to abolish fate

my-burnt-city

me: "i love punchdrunk because even in a market saturated with imitators, they still lead the way with unique experiences and world-class performers"

punchdrunk: "what if bridge command but SCARY (and probably no performers)"

te-pu-si-ti

Confirmed, no performers 🥲

#punchdrunk #lander 23

te-pu-si-ti

Sacrificed children

This morning I was awoken by the sound of prayer.

A tune curling through my window: God is greatest, God is greatest, God is greatest.

It's Eid al-Adha. The Eid of sacrifice. Honouring when Ibrahim/Abraham was willing to kill his son, and for his devotion, his son was saved.

Of course, when Ismail (or Isaac) is replaced by a ram on the altar, I immediately start thinking of another sacrificed child. Replaced by a deer, in some versions. In others, not.

Not a test of faith who was always destined to be saved. A punishment, a dare, or a wretched bargain: lose the girl or lose the whole army.

And Artemis took pity on the girl - she had no fault in all this. She had a further life. But either way, her father did the damning deed. He was not only willing, but he went through with it.

There's no winning in war.

And the clever thing The Burnt City did was to link up all the lost children of the war: not just killed, but sacrificed. Not only Iphigenia and Polyxena, parallels already drawn in the text between these two slaughtered princesses. Also Polydorus: in this version, not only killed for man's greed, but also sacrificed at the request of a god. A dark god, outside the pantheon, worshipped in secret.

Hidden away in a labyrinth.

"Boys are harder to find," I once heard Polymestor say. All the boys had been sent away already. All the boys were already off being killed. (Sacrificed to Ares.)

All except one prince, still protected by his mother.

He, too, must feed the unquenchable thirst for blood, one way or another.

The labyrinth is the city and the city is war. It repeats over and over and over again, and were it not for the war, nobody would know its name.

And all sacrificed children are the same child. When Polydorus takes me into his refuge under the stairs, he tells me a story, but the story belongs to Mycenae. The tale of the lion cub is from Aeschylus' Agamemnon. But he is not just Polydorus, he is every child that has been lost or thrown away for what was deemed a greater cause. When Iphigenia takes me into her hut, she tells not the story from her own text, but instead a story of a world that's all merciless and fake.

Every child lost to war is a loss to the whole world. Nobody comes out victorious.

marthajefferson

The three primary uses of masks in film are entertainment, disguise and protection. From ancient Greek plays through Japanese Noh theater, masks are deeply intertwined in the universal language of entertainment and ritual, and its power as a transformative tool is so ritualized and timeworn that it is the unofficial logo for an entire artform. Since theater was an influence on early motion pictures (consider the framing and gestural acting of silent film), it figures that masks would be smuggled into movies, and some of the most enduring images from film history are now associated with masks. —Alex Vlahov

V for Vendetta (2005), The Mask (1961), The Mummy Returns (2001), Emerald City s01e06 (2016), Black Orpheus (1959), Judex (1963), The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), Eyes Without A face (1960), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Squid Game s01e07 (2021), Knights of the Zodiac (2023), Onibaba (1964), Scream (1996)