The Uncommercial Traveller: Arcola & Punchdrunk

The Uncommercial Traveller

Join in the British Council’s Dickens 2012 celebrations! Are you in Melbourne, Karachi, London, Singapore or Penang?

Click HERE to download a uniquely creative audio guided tour of your city. If you’re in another location or short of time, just listen to the audio from wherever you are to experience this inspirational collection of stories and memories of global cities.

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As part of the British Council’s Dickens 2012 programme, Arcola Theatre and Punchdrunk Enrichment set out to rediscover the resonance of Dickens’s creative process for the 21st century. They will lead a unique series of collaborations in cities across Asia and Australia, creating theatrical audio-guided journeys in each location. Each audio journey is then launched at a special event for local audiences as well as being available to download, offering wider audiences a creative encounter – from a distance – with each city.

One of the great socio-realists of his time, Dickens documented life in a rapidly developing London in The Uncommercial Traveller, wandering through the city and capturing its everyday joys and tragedies. Inspired by this little-known collection of journalistic writings, the education and community teams at Arcola and Punchdrunk – both of which are known in the UK for their innovative approaches to theatre and community engagement – will work with local artists, communities and sound designers in four fascinating international cities. They will develop a creative and reflective tour in each location, using Dickens's approach to seek out forgotten places and uncover hidden stories.

The idea originated in Dalston, London, where Arcola and Punchdrunk worked with local performers over the age of sixty, capturing stories from their experiences of living in the area to create an audio journey and an immersive performance in a disused shop. Working closely with the British Council, the UK practitioners have reconceived The Uncommercial Traveller as an international project that will take on a new life in each location, with local participants designing their own journeys.

The international Uncommercial Traveller kicked off in Pakistan (public events: 10-12 February). Past and present students of Karachi’s National Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA) worked with Arcola and Punchdrunk to develop an experience which invites audiences to explore the building in which they studied: the beautiful Hindu Gymkhana. Constructed in 1925, the Gymkhana was the first public building in Karachi to adopt the Mughal-Revival architectural style. The Karachi Literature Festival also featured a related public discussion about the creative experience.

Later in February, prominent emerging playwrights from St Martin’s and Courthouse Arts will work with experienced playwrights to create a journey through Melbourne’s architecture for the National Play Festival. The festival will launch in Melbourne, Australia on 21 February and the stories will be available to download from ArtsFrontier.

Come April, The Uncommercial Traveller:Singapore will feature on an app as part of Musicity. Another city-focused digital project partnered by the British Council, Musicity enables local recording artists to compose original music in response to an aspect of the city that inspires them.

The last leg of The Uncommercial Traveller takes place in George Town, Penang, Malaysia. Watch this space for more information.

Peter Higgin, Enrichment Director for Punchdrunk, says about the project:

The idea of discovery and walking and of creating something is quite universal, so it’ll be interesting to see how taking this process to different countries works – whether we’ll find a sense of the voice of Pakistan or the voice of Melbourne or the voice of Singapore.

Its about asking people to become Dickens in a sense, and asking them to repeat his process and see what they find out. The idea is that Dickens was discovering and telling hidden stories within his immediate community and I think that will be exciting to draw upon and explore in these different countries.