Leading practitioners

(Theatre de) Complicite

"People often ask where we begin. We always begin with a text. But that text can take many forms - I mean it can equally well be a visual text, a text of action, a musical one as well as the more conventional one involving plot and characters. Theatre, says Aristotle, is an act and an action. Action is also a text. As is the space, the light, music, the sound of footsteps, silence and immobility. All should be as articulate and evocative as each other."

Simon McBurney, Artistic Director

Complicite are a British company, founded in 1983 by by Simon McBurney, Annabel Arden, and Marcello Magni, who all met at the Jacques Lecoq school in Paris. They use existing texts, contemporary - such as Haruki Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes, and Bruno Schulz' Street of Crocodiles, ( which also inspired the Quay Brothers Animation of the same name) shown in 1992 at the National Theatre, London,
but often play with the text, using it more as a starting reference than a literal foundation of the piece,
"... For a start, there is no script. I saw a list of ideas on a rehearsal room table, but no one else looked at it. The assistant director did offer the actors cream-coloured cards with neatly typed quotes but only on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Sort of, see what you think, let me know."
Robert Bulter on the group's process in the Independant, Aug 1992.

They have also been known to do Shakespeare, Measure for Measure and A Winter's Tale where both investigated by Complicite and re-examined them in a modern context.


http://www.complicite.org/index.html for more