Complicité's The Encounter starring Simon McBurney to be streamed for free online

Complicité's award-winning show The Encounter is being streamed for free later this month.

Inspired by Petru Popescu's novel Amazon Beaming, the piece is co-directed by Simon McBurney and Kirsty Housley, and performed by McBurney.

It has associate direction by Jemima James, design by Michael Levine, sound design by Gareth Fry with Pete Malkin, lighting by Paul Anderson and projection by Will Duke.

The piece, which had its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival in August 2015, is co-produced with the Barbican, Edinburgh International Festival, Onassis Cultural Centre – Athens, Schaubühne Berlin, Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne and Warwick Arts Centre.

It will be available from 15 to 22 May 2020 – audiences will need to wear headphones to experience the piece's binaural sound design (which doesn't work via speakers).

McBurney said: "We are, as a consequence of this pandemic, bodily cut off from one another. Disconnected. Isolated. But perhaps this sense of our separation one from another, is simply a heightening of what we felt before this all began. We are thinking now, not only about how long this will last, but also what happens on the other side. To reconnect we need, perhaps, to learn to listen more closely."

The show, co-presented with The Space, will be available on Complicité's website and YouTube channel.