How Punchdrunk theatre troup is taking over the world

Felix Barrett is a theatrical enchanter. He can turn a disused Docklands warehouse into the hottest venue in town; he can make audiences unrecognisable to themselves (with ghoul masks). He can turn the classics -

The 'majority' of the budget goes on making the space sound: 'We spend a lot getting rid of asbestos.' Punchdrunk often ends up transforming a local eyesore or reclaiming an unloved void for the community; no wonder former culture secretary James Purnell acclaimed the company as an example of 'access and excellence'. 'We put on Faust in a former factory in Wapping which had been squatted and had a very bad atmosphere. The heart of the building was really corrupt, and places like that can be a drain on the energy of people nearby.' In collaboration with the National Theatre they lavished care and imagination on every corner of the building, creating a forest of electrical cables, a graveyard, a David Lynchean Wild West saloon bar and an alchemist's lair in the eaves. The real ghosts were banished, the show received five star plaudits, and won a Critics' Circle award for best designer, and the site has now been developed into flats. In New York, Sleep No More is being performed in what was a trendy club called Bed, until a gruesome fatality saw it shut down. 'There was a fight on the top floor and somehow the lift doors opened and someone was punched backwards into the lift shaft and died. Next day the building was boarded up and four years later we were the first people to go back in.' Now the Macbeths can be glimpsed there, dancing to 'A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square'. Barrett's fascination with place started as a child when he explored the majestic UCL library in Senate House, where his father was a librarian. 'It was hugely formative, just a magical place, with beautifully antiquated architecture. I have so much reverence for books - a Kindle is the work of the devil.' To him, the labyrinthine stacks below ground were off-limits, which only made them more compelling. 'I was so inspired by Deborah Warner's Angel Project [a 1999 site-specific performance about angels brooding over London on the top floor of the Euston Tower].'

After a youth spent 'roping the boys and my younger brother into digging tunnels through brambles in Beckenham' and school at Alleyn's, Dulwich, his life changed aged 16 when he saw Robert Wilson and Hans Peter Kuhn's celebrated walk-through art installation, a series of eerie historical tableaux called H.G. (a nod to HG Wells, the author of The Time Machine) in the Clink prison at Southwark. 'There were no performers but so much was implied. It was as if someone had either left or was about to arrive. When I met Robert Wilson at the Manchester International Festival the other year, I went to pieces. Didn't know what to say.'

While studying drama at Exeter University, he was encouraged to push boundaries by putting on shows in unusual venues such as a disused army barracks; once, he made an actor dress in a cloak and perform a monologue from Dr Faustus at midnight on the hard shoulder between Exeter and Crediton. 'In my final year I'm delighted to say that the police were called out to every single project.'

At Exeter he became fascinated by the moon, 'the difference in atmosphere that comes from a low harvest moon, or a high, dry crisp moon'. He's still moon-conscious, living 'below the water level of the Thames', on a barge at Tower Bridge. 'The deck is planted with trees and we live in the cabin below. You're very aware of the tide created by the moon. You're either grounded at low tide or afloat, cradled by the water. I love our barge community. It's like a floating Cranford.' He and his new wife, Kate Vogel, who makes films for Tate Media, are moving to a bigger barge 'which has a secret passage. Every home should have a secret passage.'

They married last December in Wales, during a snowstorm. 'The night before the wedding a blizzard struck, and we were snowed in. We physically couldn't leave. Kate had to ride off on a tractor to get her wedding dress.' The wedding took place at dusk in a tiny church, and the party in a 'creaky Georgian mansion' decorated with paired objets d'art: two typewriters, two ostrich eggs, two stuffed ravens. The snow made it feel 'very cosy, like a little hub of celebration'. Entertainment came from a Welsh male voice choir and morris dancers with flowers in their hair.

He describes getting married as another 'beat' in the dance of tradition. English folklore, ritual and myth are all on his mind. He's outraged that the Bonfire Night tradition at Ottery St Mary has recently been suspended. 'Every young man that's come of age that year carries a flaming tar barrel through the street. It's an ancient ritual of virility that has been repeated forever, until two years ago when it was stopped due to health and safety. That's it. It's over. These things are snuffing out all over the country' - he mimes several pinches in the air with his fingers, high and low, covering an invisible map of Britain - 'and so it feels like can we keep something like that going theatrically? Can we keep a little pocket of danger alive in our sanitised lives? You don't want to be irresponsible, of course, but you don't want to be mollycoddled, because as soon as a nation's mollycoddled, people don't take responsibility for themselves.'

During the London riots, Barrett felt 'a real crackle in the air. In a way I kind of appreciated the fact that everything splintered for a moment and the deeply protective world was suddenly challenged. It's strange how it can wash over a city and crescendo like that and then burn out.' What could have helped prevent the riots? 'If you look at some of the very safe-feeling places in the world like Japan, they have very good release valves. Every high street has a little arcade with experiential run-throughs called walks of terror, a bit like our haunted houses.'

These 'walks of terror' inspired Barrett's latest show And Darkness Descended, an over-18 collaboration with PlayStation running in the vaults under Waterloo for four nights (1-4 September). He loves to send his audiences unguided into darkness. 'We don't give people a map, or tell them to mind their heads. What we do is empower the audience, so they're forced to make their own decisions and trust their instincts as well as their thinking, cerebral side.' Backstage, they use the language of film to structure a show. 'Bizarrely, we talk about "wide shots" and "close-ups", so there are moments when it's just about the flutter of an eyelid or the sound of someone breathing, and then it's back to the wide shots which are about synchronicity and bringing the whole show to a crescendo.' Throughout, 'there has to be a frisson of danger; the sense you could get it wrong or that you have to work at it to get it'.

Perhaps he went too far this year when he applied these principles to a Dr Who-based show for children, The Crash of the Elysium, which kicked off with the premise that the world was threatened by aliens only the audience of six- to 12-year-olds could defeat. 'A lot of children wanted to leave. It was a big responsibility to put on their shoulders, saying, "Look, there's an emergency, a spaceship has crashed and we want you on board to save the universe." It's a bit of pressure, and if they got upset we could have taken them outside and said, "It's only a show," and broken the spell, but we took great pride in saying, "Look, we can do this, sometimes I get scared too; hold my torch, lead the way." Their sense of jubilation and triumph at the end was transformative.'