In August, almost any available space in Edinburgh can become a stage and the biggest auditorium at the Conference Centre – site of the TV festival at the end of the month – has been borrowed for one of the biggest events of the International Festival: the world premiere of the latest Theatre Complicite production, The Encounter.Befittingly at this venue, the initial impression is of a lecture. Simon McBurney, co-founder of Complicite, stands alone in front of a microphone on a stage on which the only other props are several bottles of water and a foam skull on a stick which, McBurney explains, is a binaural dummy head, synched so that whatever sounds it detects are exactly reproduced through headphones we wear. Instructed to close our eyes while McBurney whispers at the side