Simon McBurney's THE ENCOUNTER to Bring the Amazon to the West Coast This Spring

The Encounter - among the most compelling theatrical experiences ever staged on Broadway and in London - will make its West Coast debut in April at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills. Performances begin April 6 with the opening night set for Friday, April 7. The 12-performance limited engagement runs through Sunday, April 16.

The Encounter is a one-of-a-kind experience, directed and performed by Complicite's Simon McBurney. Combining superb storytelling with binaural technology (3D audio), McBurney takes audiences on a theatrical journey from the intimacy of his home in London to deep into the Amazon rainforest.

"When I first saw The Encounter at the Bristol Old Vic, it blew me away," said Paul Crewes, The Wallis' Artistic Director. "The Encounter combines Simon's remarkable storytelling with cutting-edge technology that allow audiences to have a unique shared theatre experience that is unlike anything people have ever had before."

Single tickets are now available for $25 - $100. Subscriptions are available for purchase starting at $79. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit TheWallis.org/Encounter, call 310.746.4000, or stop by in person at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts Ticket Services located at 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90210. Ticket prices subject to change.

Inspired by the book The Encounter: Amazon Beaming by Beverly Hills resident Petru Popescu, The Encounter follows the true story of National Geographic photographer Loren McIntyre as he finds himself lost in a remote area of Brazil in 1969, leading to a startling encounter that changed his life.

Each seat in The Wallis' Bram Goldsmith Theater will be equipped with a pair of Sennheiser headphones. Audience members will put them on and experience ground-breaking sound design, plugging into the power of the imagination while engaging everyone in new and breathtaking ways as McBurney leads listeners on an epic journey deep into the Amazon rainforests. As McBurney's mesmerizing tale about McIntrye reaches its climax, this extraordinary performance asks some of the most urgent questions of today: about how we live and what we believe to be true.

The Encounter is directed and performed by Simon McBurney. Kirsty Housley is the co-director and Jemima Jones is Associate Director. Design is by Michael Levine, sound by Gareth Fry and Pete Malkin, lighting by Paul Anderson and projections designed by Will Duke.

The Encounter is a Complicite co-production with Edinburgh International Festival, the Barbican, London, Onassis Cultural Centre - Athens, Schaubühne Berlin, Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne and Warwick Arts Centre. Supported by Sennheiser and the Wellcome Trust.

London-based Complicite was last seen in L.A. with Shun-kin (2013), Strange Poetry (2004) and The Noise of Time (2002). 2016 saw the launch of Complicite Associates, a new program to support theatre makers and artists. Bryony Kimmings was the inaugural Complicite Associate and A Pacifist's Guide to the War on Cancer was its first production which played at the National Theatre in London. Recent productions include Ungeduld des Herzens (Beware of Pity), a co-production with the Schaubühne, Berlin; Lionboy, its first show for young people and families; and The Master and Margarita, A Disappearing Number and The Elephant Vanishes. The company is also known for its award-winning Creative Learning program, which provides innovative opportunities for audience engagement. Visit www.complicite.org for more.

Simon McBurney is a multi-Olivier Award-winning, Tony and SAG Award-nominated actor, writer, director and one of Europe's most original theatre makers. He is co-founder of Complicite, "...Britain's most innovative theatre company" (New Statesman). His directing credits with Complicite include Ungeduld des Herzens (Beware of Pity), a co-production with the Schaubühne, Berlin, The Master and Margarita, Shun-kin, A Disappearing Number, Measure for Measure, A Minute Too Late, The Elephant Vanishes, Strange Poetry and The Street of Crocodiles. Other directing credits include The Kid Stays in the Picture, All My Sons on Broadway and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui with Al Pacino in New York. Opera credits include The Magic Flute and A Dog's Heart, bothproduced by De Nederlandse Opera and English National Opera in collaboration with Complicite.

He is a prolific film, television and radio actor and has appeared in movies, including The Theory of Everything, Magic in the Moonlight, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, and most recently The Conjuring 2, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation and Allied.

Beverly Hills resident Petru Popescu is Romania's best-known novelist. In his homeland, he wrote mordant anti-communist prose that put him in direct conflict with dictator Ceaus?escu. When invited to the International Writers' Workshop of the University of Iowa, Popescu defected to the West. He has travelled extensively, including to Amazonia, where he met Loren McIntyre, who shared his life story with the writer. Mesmerized by Loren's accounts of being kidnapped by elusive tribes and of discovering the source of the giant river, Popescu wrote The Encounter: Amazon Beaming. He followed it with The New York Times bestsellers Almost Adam and The Oasis. He is currently working on a new novel.

For more information about The Wallis, visit TheWallis.org, and like The Wallis on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

Photo Credit: Robbie Jack

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