Against Captain’s Orders: A Journey into the Uncharted - Museums Association

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Against Captain’s Orders: A Journey into the Uncharted

National Maritime Museum, London
Lucy Perman
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Lucy Perman enjoys navigating her way through an exhibition created by a collaboration between theatre company Punchdrunk and a maritime museum

We set off on our experience – a motley crew of three adults and three eager seven-year-olds – by waiting to join the HMS Adventure, docked within London’s National Maritime Museum (NMM).

Against Captain’s Orders is the latest offering from Punchdrunk, a groundbreaking theatre company renowned for its site-specific immersive theatre, most recently with the adult show The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable.

This production, the result of a partnership between the museum and Punchdrunk, is aimed at a younger audience: six to 12-year-olds and their families.

We gathered together ready to climb aboard for our voyage. Life jackets donned, we assembled in four crews – Shipwatch, Navigation, Salvage and Midshipman – taking our instructions from museum curators, or at least that’s who they said they were.

Through a dark doorway, we made our way to four wooden boats and, as we took our seats, the quest began.
 
Each boat contained a precious artefact from the museum: a sextant, a ship’s bottle, the telescope belonging to Grace Darling, the heroic young woman who helped rescue survivors from a Northumberland shipwreck in 1838, and Sir Francis Drake’s drumsticks.

After hearing a few historical facts about them, these objects (in reality, not historic artefacts from the museum’s collection, but theatrical props) mysteriously disappeared into the museum’s deep storage system.

It was our task to find and return them to their rightful place in the museum, even if it meant disobeying the strict instructions of museum staff. We were encouraged from the outset to take risks. So with this in mind we entered into the depths of the museum, through forbidden doorways, to find the treasure.

From there we were guided from room to room in search of the missing artefacts. Here, the beauty of the Punchdrunk experience really took hold. Each space told a story, held a history and captured our imaginations.

The way that each room was dressed was exquisite: Livi Vaughan’s design evoked dusty old classrooms and libraries, rooms stuffed full of maps and compasses, junk, seafaring objects, and plenty of flotsam and jetsam.

Techniques reminiscent of Dr Who and Harry Potter provided the magic and the mechanical means to return the buried four missing items – found by the children along the way.
 
The production by Peter Higgin and Katy Balfour was fast-moving and the atmosphere was one of urgency and danger. Given the level of detail and storytelling embedded in each room, it was with some regret that we were hurried onto each new chapter.

We would have willingly spent longer exploring each space and making our own discoveries.
 
Storytelling

The curators guided us through spaces constructed to resemble museum backrooms with light-touch storytelling, which enabled us to find and return the artefacts to their original settings. We also managed to lose and then find one of the curators who took a wrong turn and was briefly lost at sea.

The joy of previous Punchdrunk shows that I’ve experienced has been the ability to make one’s own adventure, to explore and discover without having to stick to the company’s narrative.

I’m sure that our young explorers would have enjoyed spending longer investigating each space and making their own adventures. Children are naturally curious, particularly at the younger age range, and don’t necessarily need much narrative to make sense of experiences and find their own stories.
 
Our young seafarers frolicked in the park afterwards, playing happily with water and sand in the playground, inspired by the sea adventure. Perhaps what they also enjoyed at this point was their freedom – freedom to roam and explore, and to play.
 
Punchdrunk’s 2014 production, The Drowned Man, set in a fictitious Hollywood studio, was a gigantic adult playground: spacious, exciting, dangerous and dark. Against Captain’s Orders could go further in creating a playspace for its young audience and allowing them to navigate their own way through.

Today’s children tend to be constantly chaperoned and over-supervised and museums often provide a safe environment to counter this – space, freedom and the opportunity for a child-determined trail. Punchdrunk could have taken greater risks in instilling this spirit in its audience and allowing the children to play more freely in the beautiful HMS Adventure seascape.

The over-arching theme of the production and the curator’s closing message to the children was about questioning the rules, using your initiative, being curious and having your eyes wide open. This is a laudable aim at a time when children are expected to learn by rote and comply with tight frameworks, rules and expectations.
 
Curiously, the experience felt quite separate from the wider context of the maritime museum. It succeeded in locating our journey in the bowels of the building without any of us coming up for much air.

It would be interesting to know how many travellers from HMS Adventure then went on to explore the museum and to take in the wider maritime adventure. We didn’t have time that day, but Punchdrunk did draw us in and we are keen to return to investigate the museum itself in the near future.

A welcome partnership

At a time when museums and galleries are trying to make themselves more accessible to families and young people, the partnership with Punchdrunk is a welcome one.

The promenade experience of moving from space to space lends itself well to a museum walkabout and encourages the audience to find stories in every corner.
 
Theatre companies, too, are increasingly looking to produce their work in different ways, reaching new audiences through partnerships such as this.

Understanding and celebrating the wider impact of this collaboration will be insightful to both sectors, particularly with their shared ambition for audience development and deeper engagement with visitors.


Project data

Cost £45,000
Main funder Arts Council England
Partners Punchdrunk Enrichment; National Maritime Museum
Writer Simon Davies
Directors Peter Higgin and Katy Balfour
Designer Livi Vaughan
National Maritime Museum development Sarah Lockwood, the head of learning and interpretation; Matthew Lawrence, the senior exhibitions project manager
Exhibition ends 31 August

Lucy Perman is the executive director of the Clean Break theatre company



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