From the 1990s, communication instruments have become widespread, and technological equipment has become more accessible to the public. In that situation, the theater has become more mediatized. Nowadays, the technology is developing with unavertable acceleration. Because the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the world for more than two years now, the theater has lost its ability to bring the audience and the actor together in a social environment. Although the future of theater becomes more debatable in this situation, many theorists have started questioning digitalization and live performance once again. Despite the difficulties of this period, Complicité’s production The Encounter, which will be discussed in this article, was watched by many people from many parts of the world via Complicité’s Internet broadcasting.

The Encounter is a performance in which technology has almost become the actor’s partner on stage. In that context, this study tries to examine the concept of mediatizing, which has been discussed by many theorists, in today’s conditions. This article discusses in four chapters the relationship between the performance and technology, sound, photography, and recorded media. Recorded media have become more important in theater practice during the pandemic. With this new experience provided by Internet broadcasts, the audience can see actors more closely and from different angles right from their homes, although they lack the company of other audience members. On the other hand, it is to be discussed whether this hybrid form, which offers a different theater experience for the audience, is closer to the practices of theater or cinema. In recordings, the presence of an actor on stage turns into a visual image. In this case, the audience watches a theatrical performance as a movie or a television show through which it acquires a different viewing practice in new conditions. By presenting a recording, Complicité challenges those practices and tries to involve the audience in the play. In that way, it tries to discuss the topics of the play in the context of current conditions. 

Simon McBurney directed, and performed The Encounter, which UK-based Complicité debuted in 2015. He worked for more than ten years on the staging of the play, which was originally an adaptation of Petru Popescu’s novel Amazon Beaming. The novel tells the story of National Geographic photographer Loren McIntyre’s search in 1969 for the seminomadic community called Mayoruna, also known as the cat people, living in the remotest corners of the Amazons and thought to have been extinct at that time. This study uses Amazon Beaming as a source but is based on the text of The Encounter in particular. In addition to those sources, it uses the rehearsal notes to analyze the elements observed in the staging. 

When McBurney was considering how to bring Amazon Beaming to the stage, he decided that he needed to convey the Amazon rain forest, one of the world’s most biodiverse regions, with a design that would appeal to the senses of the audience. For that reason, sound design has a very important role in the play. This design, in which the audience watches and listens to the entire play through earphones, enables the audience to approach the narrative with a sensory experience rather than creating an illusion for them. In the play, the Amazons and the Mayoruna tribe are not conveyed to the audience visually. The actor is accompanied by sound and light design. When telling the story of photographer Loren McIntyre, McBurney says the photography is flat, and a photograph is a memory from the past. McBurney underlines that he wants to invite the audience to the present. This study analyzes the performance, based on the approach of Complicité to the novel and to the Amazons.