Turns out Fenway Park won’t be the most interesting place Jack White performs at in 2014. The Newport Folk Festival headliner took to a secret London location last night for a medical-themed gig with UK theatre group Punchdrunk, known for their work with Sleep No More, Damon Albarn, and others.
Fans wore medical gowns and surgical masks and signed their internal organs away. Those in attendance only came into contact with White after a screen dropped inside a smoke-filled quarantine chamber.
No doubt.
[All photo by David James Swanson]
Third Man Records posted the following photo this afternoon, with the rather brilliant caption: Reported outbreak of an unidentified contagious disease in Central London last night! More on the gig below…
Here’s the word on last night, via publicity house Nasty Little Man:
Last night at midnight in central London, Jack White played a secret show in the basement of a disused office block, to fans clad entirely in powder blue medical gowns.
The event was a collaboration between Jack and theatre mavericks Punchdrunk, who had temporarily transformed the space into the Vescovo & Co Clinic for contagious diseases, staffed with doctors, nurses and orderlies at the time of a disease outbreak.
Drawing on the themes of Jack White’s current album, Lazaretto, a term used to describe a quarantine island, the experience began with an elaborate online treasure hunt. A spoof medical infomercial from 1948 appeared in the archives of online medical resource the Wellcome Trust, which contained various obtuse clues leading Jack’s superfans to a website belonging to the fake medical organisation, Vescovo & Company. Thousands of fans submitted their details to this website as part of an online screening for a contagious disease. A lucky few progressed through the screening process and received a telephone call, inviting them to an out-of-hours appointment at the Vescovo Clinic. Punchdrunk created the clinic across multiple floors of a disused building owned by The Vinyl Factory.
On arrival, fans were asked to change into blue medical gowns before being subjected to a variety of treatments and tests in a maze of medical rooms. Chaos descended as an outbreak alarm was raised and terrified fans were herded into a smoke filled quarantine chamber. Finally a screen was dropped to reveal Jack and band in full medical uniform who proceeded to belt out a thirty minute set before Jack himself succumbed to the mysterious disease. The rock star fell to the ground in a fit of convulsions before being strapped to a stretcher and wheeled off to a waiting ambulance.
