"Complicite"
This is the British theatre company which founded in 1983 by Simon Mc Burney ,Annabel Arden and Marcello Magni.The original name was Theatre de Complicite.
Since then, the innovative approach of its creators and members of the performing arts enabled him to gain recognition for both audience and critics often Complicite who place in the category of chief representatives of physical theater. Sgt Alex writes about them as "veterans" of the variety theatre1, but in the eyes of Murray and Keefego they are "pre-eminent and most obvious example of physical theater," referring to the tradition of French mime 2. What's the secret of success Complicite? It seems that in the fact that its development is based not only on a dynamic team, whose composition is constantly changing, but also on the whole concept of the theater deeply rooted in the physical expression. How often do they emphasize its creator, Complicite, however more than merely physical theater. This multiplicity, interdisciplinarity and diversity. It is also cooperation, co-author and participation, as suggested by its name derived from the French word meaning Complicité and 'complicity, participation'.
In terms of the workshop is quite difficult to talk about intimate theater Complicite creative strategy, since the methods used by Simon Burney, co-founder and current artistic director of the group, the development of each new presentation characterized by great diversity. Equally difficult to give a common definition of the so-called devised theater, one of the leading representatives of the Complicite.
* 3 famous productions that have toured the world:
1)Production - "The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol"
2)Year - 1994-97
3)Director - Simon McBurney
4)Writer/Adapter - Simon McBurney & Mark Wheatley
5)Design - Tim Hatley, Lighting: Paule Constable, Sound: Christopher Shutt
6)Cast - Lilo Baur, Mick Barnfather, Hannes Flaschberger, Simon McBurney, Tim McMullan, Stefan Metz, Hélène Patarôt
7)Awards - 1997Toronto DORA Award Best Production of a Play, 1997 Toronto CORA
Award Best Actress (Lilo Baur), 1996 Belgrade International Festival
Grand Prix, 1996 Best Performance of the Belgrade International Festival
voted by the audience, 1996 Belgrade Daily Newspaper Politika Prize for
Best Director (Simon McBurney), 1995 The Age Newspaper Critic's Award
for Creative Excellence at the Melbourne International Festival, 1995
Barcelona Critic's Award for Best Foreign Production, 1994 Manchester
Evening News Award for Best Actress in a Visiting Production (Lilo
Baur), 1994 Time Out Theatre Award, 1994 TMA/Martini Award for Best UK
Touring Production
"The
Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol is a richly textured and luminous play, inventively
exploring peasant life, the earth and death.
Lucie
Cabrol is a wild, tiny woman born into a peasant family in France in 1900,
marked from birth and teased as a child. Abandoned by her lover, Jean, and
banished by her family, she becomes an outcast, beginning her second life
alone. She survives by selling mushrooms and berries, and smuggling goods
across the border. But it is not until her third life, her afterlife, that she
discovers the survival of something more than bare human existence - the
survival of hope and love.
The Three
Lives of Lucie Cabrol was adapted from a short story by John Berger, and was
first performed in 1994 at the Manchester Dancehouse."
THE CHAIRS
1)Production - "The Chairs"
2)Year - 1997-98
3)Director -Simon McBurney
4)Writer/Adapter - Eugène Ionesco in a new translation by Martin Crimp
5)Design - Quay Brothers, Lighting: Paul Anderson, Sound: Paul Arditti
6)Cast - Mick Barnfather, Sarah Baxter, Richard Briers,Geraldine McEwan.
7)Awards - 1998 Six Tony Nominations and six Drama Desk Nominations, 1998 Drama
Desk Award for Best Design (Quay Brothers), 1998 Laurence Olivier Award
Nomination for Lighting Design (Paul Anderson), 1998 Time Out Live Award
(Geraldine McEwan), 1998 Barclays/TMA Theatre Award for Best Actress
(Geraldine McEwan)
"The play concerns two characters, known as Old Man and Old Woman,
frantically preparing chairs for a series of invisible guests who are
coming to hear an orator reveal the Old Man's discovery. It is implied
that this discovery is the meaning of life, but it is never actually
said. The guests supposedly include "everyone", implying everyone in the
world; there are other implications that this is a post-apocalyptic world. The Old Man, for example, speaks of the destruction of Paris.
The invisibility of the guests implies that the Old Man and Old Woman
are the last two people on the planet. As the "guests" arrive, the two
characters speak to them and reminisce cryptically about their lives. A
high point in the happiness of the couple is reached when the invisible
emperor arrives. Finally, the orator arrives to deliver his speech to
the assembled crowd. Played by a real actor, the orator's physical
presence contradicts the expectations set up by the action earlier in
the play.
"The old couple then commit suicide
by throwing themselves out of the window into the ocean. They claim
that life couldn't get any better at this point because the whole world
is about to hear the Old Man's astounding revelation. As the orator
begins to speak, the invisible crowd assembled in the room and the real
audience in the theatre discover that the orator is a deaf-mute.
At the end of the play, the sound of an audience fades in. Ionesco
claimed that this sound was the most significant moment in the play,
writing in a letter to the first director, “The last decisive moment of
the play should be the expression of ... absence,” He said that after
the Orator leaves, "At this moment the audience would have in front of
them ... empty chairs on an empty stage decorated with streamers,
littered with useless confetti, which would give an impression of
sadness, emptiness and disenchantment such as one finds in a ballroom
after a dance; and it would be after this that the chairs, the scenery,
the void, would inexplicably come to life (that is the effect, an effect
beyond reason, true in its improbability, that we are looking for and
that we must obtain), upsetting logic and raising fresh doubts."
MNEMONIC
1)Production -" Mnemonic"
2)Year - 1999-01
3)Director -
4)Writer/Adapter - 'The Company'
5)Design - Michael Levine, Lighting: Paul Anderson, Sound: Christopher Shutt, Costume: Christina Cunningham.
6)Cast - Katrin Cartlidge, Richard Katz, Simon McBurney, Tim McMullan, Stefan
Metz, Kostas Philippoglou, Catherine Schaub Abkarian, Daniel Wahl
7)Awards - 2002, Golden Mask Critics' Award, Festival Mess, Sarajevo, 2001 Drama
Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience, 2001 Drama Desk Award for
Best Lighting Design (Paul Anderson), 2001 Drama Desk Award for Best
Sound Design (Christopher Shutt), 2001 Lucille Lortel Award for
Outstanding Achievement off Broadway for Unique Theatrical Experience,
for Best Sound Design (Christopher Shutt) and for Best Lighting Design
(Paul Anderson), 2001 Syndicat Professionnel de la Critique Dramatique
et Musicale, Grand Prix de la Critique for Best Foreign Play, 2001 Time
Out Live Award for Outstanding Achievement, 1999 The Critic's Circle
Award for Best, New Play
"A play and production from one of the world's most innovative theatre companies Mnemonic is about memory, people's personal histories, shared memories and discordant recollections - exhuming the past in order to examine it in the present. A variety of stories - from the discovery of bog people like Tollund Man to peoples compulsion to retrace the origins of their ancestors - collide and form a piece of theatre which questions our concept of time, our capacity to distort history and our attempts to retell the past. "An ice-preserved body - from 5,200 years ago - forms the central image of Theatre de Complicite's dazzlingly imaginative meditation on memory and morality. Timely and unforgettable"
