Punchdrunk in pictures, from Faust to The Drowned Man

A member of the Punchdrunk dance company in a former sorting office next to London's Paddington station, where The Drowned Man is to be staged – their first major show in London for six years Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

Spread over five floors of a derelict building in Wapping, the giant art installation at the heart of Punchdrunk's 2006 production of Faust, their breakthrough production – an adaptation of Goethe – won the Critics' Circle theatre award for best design Photograph: Stephen Dobbie/colin marsh

Another scene from Faust, this time showing the audience clad in masks, which are standard part of Punchdrunk shows (the company rejects the term "immersive", arguing that the mask creates important distance from the action) Photograph: PR

A scene from Sleep No More, a Macbeth-cum-Hitchcock thriller, one of the productions that made Punchdrunk's name. It was restaged in 2009, in association with the American Repertory Theatre in a suburb of Boston, and featured an American cast, later becoming a mega-hit in New York Photograph: Stephen Dobbie and Lindsay Nolin/PR

Wearing masks and shuffling silently through the space, the audience witnessed a series of silent tableaux, inspired by Hitchcock – in particular his adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca Photograph: Stephen Dobbie and Lindsay Nolin/PR

Tom Lawrence dances to his death in the company's lavish production of The Masque of the Red Death at Battersea Arts Centre (2007–08), transformed by architect Steve Tomkins and the Punchdrunk team into a palace of wonders. Red velvet set the scene for Edgar Allan Poe's gory tales of murder, incest and violence
Tristram Kenton

The tormenting swing of the pendulum in Poe's horror tale The Pit and the Pendulum was hinted at during The Masque of the Red Death
Tristram Kenton

Punchdrunk's It Felt Like A Kiss (2009), made in collaboration with filmmaker Adam Curtis, took audiences on a tour through 1950s American cold war paranoia – again inside an abandoned office block, this time in Manchester Photograph: PR

Contralto Claudia Huckle in the title role and counter-tenor Andrew Watts as her twin brother Ferdinand in Torsten Rasch's new opera The Duchess of Malfi, based on John Webster's tragedy – a joint-venture between Punchdrunk and the English National Opera Photograph: Stephen Cummiskey/PR

Claudia Huckle and Andrew Watts in The Duchess of Malfi Photograph: Stephen Cummiskey

Dimly lit, eerie rooms convey the mood of Webster's play at the Great Eastern Quay in Royal Albert Docks Photograph: Stephen Dobbie and Lindsay Nolin/PR

Kat McGarr in The Crash Of The Elysium at the Manchester International Festival, 2011 Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Another piece for young audiences, this time between the ages of 3 and 6: this is Frances Moulds (Mrs Winter) and Matthew Blake (Mr Winter) in 2012's The House Where Winter Lives Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Part of the advance publicity for The Drowned Man was a real-life event held in east London, in which selected participants were invited into a basement by "Andres" (Timothy Block) to watch a cinematic taster of the show Photograph: Simon Kane