ARCHIVES 2012 / Complicite

"The English theatre has a fine and honourable tradition. Simon McBurney and Complicite are not part of this; they have created their own tradition and this is why they are so special, so valuable." Peter Brook

Simon McBurney's Complicite: a constant state of evolution

Complicite began as a collective and though the project has radically altered, has twisted and turned, that early spirit of collaborative work has remained its defining principle.

The Company formed in 1983 around Simon McBurney, Annabel Arden and Marcello Magni, and came under the Artistic Directorship of McBurney in the mid 1990s. Complicite has created work in collaboration with actors, designers, writers, artists and other specialists from around the globe, but has established core relationships that span the last three decades. These many diverse associates  - as they're known – have developed and evolved a shared creative language, which provides an anchor for the explorative work that the Company has become famous for and which foregrounds every piece they bring to the stage.

Alongside its theatre pieces, Complicite has created opera and worked in other media, with radio productions of Mnemonic and John Berger's To The Wedding, a collaboration with The Pet Shop Boys in Trafalgar Square in central London, and The Vertical Line, a multi-disciplinary installation performed in a disused tube station. If Complicite is constantly percolating new collaborators, so too the work is in a constant state of evolution from the actor-led, comic and highly physical early pieces including Put it On Your Head and A Minute Too Late to the vast recent collaborations directed by McBurney which embrace intellectually challenging material and cutting-edge technologies.

Complicite has transformed theatre in the UK and changed the expectations of audiences and makers alike. The mainstream of British theatre has been altered by Complicite's influence, so that the work, which twenty five years ago was considered esoteric and highly experimental, now plays on the largest national stages and even succeeds in the conservative environment of London's West End.

This exhibition offers a brief overview of the work, and then plunges the viewer into the explorative processes behind that work, examining how, and with what tools, Complicite and Simon McBurney approach theatremaking.