Complicité

Major productions

Europe Theatre Prize

Théâtre de Complicité, which is one of the most original and inventive British theatre companies, was founded in 1983. It was created by four young people whose aim was to bring the physical disciplines they had learned at the Jacques Lecoq Mime School in Paris to the largely text-based British theatre. But over the last thirteen years the company has not only acquired an international reputation, it has also grown organically. It now combines a strong mimetic skill with the exploration of complex literary texts. It has forged its own uniquely brilliant style which makes it a worthy winner of the Europe Prize Theatrical Realities. Its founder members were Simon McBurney, Marcello Magno, Fiona Gordon who had all studied together in Paris and Annabel Arden who was a contemporary of Simon at Cambridge University. The first production, Put It On Your Head, was a darkly hilarious examination of an English seaside resort and attracted modest attention. There followed a series of shows dealing with such subjects as our attitudes to death, food, Christmas and office-life. Gradually built up a following for its original vision, grotesque comedy and dazzling mime. But the breakthrough came in 1988 when it presented a 15-weeks season of its work at London's Almeida Theatre including its first ever production of an existing text: a version of Durrenmatt's The visit which contained a prize winning performance by Kathryn Hunter as the vengeful plutocrat and which used mime to recreate the atmosphere of a small, run-down European town. Peter Brook, who saw the production, rated it as superior to his own version in the late '50s. Since then Complicite has become one of the most sought-after companies on the international touring circuit and has been adapted literally from texts to the stage including Bruno Schulz's Street of Crocodiles, John Berger' s The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol and J.M. Coetzee's Foe. But it has expanded its range and style without sacrifing its experimental instinct or physical discipline. Above all, it shows an astonishing ability to re-create whole communities such as that of a small Polish town in Street of Crocodiles and a peasant village in the Hautes-Alpes in Lucie Cabrol. Complicite are currently working on a co-production of Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle with the National Theatre of Great Britain. But it remains one of the most audacious and genuinely experimental companies at work in European Theatre today.

Funding

Productions index