Simon McBurney discusses his approach to directing, stating that he sees no clear starting point or origin for a theatrical piece. He views the words on the page as not yet being theatre, and finds that ideas he had originally disappear once work begins. McBurney believes the work itself is the beginning, and that a piece grows naturally through collaboration and preparation rather than being strictly planned or imposed from the outside. This natural growth allows for uncertainty and development over time.

1. Cam M. Roberts
March, 2011
THE 381: Directing Workshop
Prof. Sharon Andrews
On Directing – Director Presentation
Simon McBurney:
“At the beginning of the 1990’s, the mainstream British stage seemed to be the province
of directors and designers. On the fringes, the initiative had passed from writers to performance
groups whose work crossed generic and artistic boundaries (Forced Entertainment, Blast Theory,
DV8 Physical Theatre and Theatre de Complicite). The work of these and similar companies
had an explicitly international dimension. […] Theatre de Complicite were schooled
performance techniques developed by Jacques Lecoq in France” (Luckhurst, ed., 392).
“In 2004 the London-based theatre company Complicite, under director Simon
McBurney, presented a production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure at the National
Theatre, London. McBurney began rehearsals with an exercise whereby the cast would line up
across the stage. Those in any particular scene would step forward and deliver the words out
front, speaking directly to the audience rather than their colleagues onstage. The exercise reveals
structures and patterns in the play and establishes the basis for a more direct contact with the
audience. It also treats the play in terms of its various ‘bytes’ of information, a series of
components rather than an organic whole” (Luckhurst, ed., 556).
“The play is set in Vienna. The metropolis of Complicite’s production was a city-state
subject to modern surveillance technologies. A cameraman wandered around the stage, filming
the action for a lived feed to on-stage TV monitors. This suggested both the apparatus of
contemporary news media and a more insidious surveillance function, policing the play’s various
suspects and criminals. Prisoners wore orange jumpsuits that directly evoked the political
prisoners held by the US in Guantanamo Bay, a contemporary reference underscored when the

2. image of George Bush popped up on the TV screens. This might be thought an obvious and easy
cultural reference, but I think the effect is more deeply embedded. The stage is nicely
intertextual, combing old and new modes of theatre and resonant icons of modern culture. Its
linkages produce a feel for the production, to do with the sense of arbitrariness that hangs over
the operations of justice (an evident theme of the play) and the reach of the state into personal
lives” (Luckhurst, ed., 556).
“Meanwhile the stage remediates its own performance, playing back through TV
monitors and projections onto the floor parts of the speeches and movements of characters. The
audience gets a different viewing-angle on parts of the action, but also the sense that this is a
world of fractured and multiple perspectives where no single position hold (unless through the
diktat of those in power). The production, then, is prism-like, refracting its characters and their
statements through a hypermediated mise en scene” (Luckhurst, 556).
“As its name suggest, the Wrestling School has developed a distinctly physical style of
performance; and in this, although their techniques are very different, Barker’s work parallels the
new form of theatre represented by Simon McBurney and the Theatre de Complicite…” (Innes,
ed., 510).
“As with [Caryl Churchill’s] The Skryker where words take on non-logical forms, the
result is a style of performance drama or physical theatre, which has proved one of the most
production lines of development over the final decade leading into the millennium. In this it
corresponds with the work of performance-artists like Simon McBurney” (Innes, ed., 528).

3. Collisions by Simon McBurney
[Director’s Note to Mnemonic (October 1999)]
“This show is being made through extraordinary and intricate collisions. Collisions
between the actors who have used material from their own lives and integrated it with the show.
A collision with the words […]. A collision with the work of long time Theatre de Complicite
collaborators…” (Methuen).
“Collisions too, between the living and the dead. My father was an archaeologist, a
specialist in the Paleolithic and perhaps something of my wonder at the immensity of the past, on
of the most startling discovers of modern times, fins its origin in the stories he told me. And
when I hear of new archaeological discoveries, new stories they not only exert the shock of the
new, but also a feeling of recognition. They stimulate my sense of memory. But not merely a
personal memory of my father whose stories are embedded into my childhood. Rather a sense of
strange familiarity with the very ancient” (Methuen).
“Certain bits of music have the same effect. A folk song from an entirely different culture
can suddenly appear very close […]. They’re popular perhaps because they evoke a feeling of
recognition” (Methuen).
“These feeling of recognition, these mnemonic associations have formed part of the
research we have all undertaken in this project. As a result we cross borders, times, and
continents attempting to piece together linking strands and thoughts from very different sources.
One tiny fragment will set off another. One element of one story will collide with its opposite.
In much the same way as we might reassemble a memory from the past or fashion a hope for the
future. Fragmentary, elliptical, and fleeting” (Methuen).
“We live in a time where stories surround us. Multiple stories. Constantly. Fragmented
by television, radio, print, the internet, calling to us from every hoarding and passing us by on
every street corner. We no longer live in a world of the single tale. So the shards of stories we
have put together, some long some shorter, collide here in the threatre, reflecting repeating, and
revolving like the act of memory itself.” (Methuen).
“Like all Theatre de Complicite shows this is a new departure. We are searching another
form to tell our stories. It is not finished. It represents a point of departure rather than a
destination. For it is only with the final collision and act of collaboration, that of the one with
you the audience, that we will be able to complete the work. You are, therefore, in a sense also
critical to the creative development of this project” (Methuen).

4. Simon McBurney – May, 2003 [Prologue to Complicite, Plays: 1]
“In all of the pieces, we are far from a reality that we might think of as ‘ours’ […].
Perhaps it is that they are all to do with memory, people remembering things. In The Street of
Crocodiles Joseph remembers when he smells the book he is reading. For Jean in Lucie Cabrol,
it is the heat of the fire which brings back the dead and in Mnemoni the physical sensation of
being alone in your room in the middle of the night unable to sleep, produces the cascade of
memories and associations about love and loss. The physical stimulation of memory in a general
human experience, common to us all, but it evokes something that is unique to each of us. It
defines who we are in life and is also our point of contact with the dead.”
“They are all compositional pieces that came about through a process of collaboration.
[…] they were developed through chaotic and continually evolving rehearsals that involved
improvisation, argument, writing, rewriting despair and hope. They represent the work of more
than fifty people, coming together over a period of seven years. They were developed as they
were performed. And they have been performed in countries all over the world to audiences who
then influence the way we remake the shows the next time we play. With each change, be they
new actors, new technicians, new producers or new audiences, fresh insights emerge, new
directions are discovered and pointed out. In this way, the pieces have become meeting points,
destinations, points de departs (points of departure), we could even say they have become places
in themselves.”
“All the pieces are about a common sense of dis-placement. An experience of loss, of a
kind of banishment specific to our time. The gathering darkness in the stories also prophesies all
that was to be obliterated after… death. […] searching to uncover more distant death… serves to
focus a common desire to know ‘Where do I come from?’”
“In the past a sense of belonging was obtained through a continuity of history and the
unchanging nature of place. Those who were stationary tended to think of the experience of
displacement belonging to the emigrant. But as I have travelled and performed it seems to me
that this sensation of ‘homelessness’ – of a rupture with the past, a kind of dismantling of history

5. and experience – is not only that of the emigrant, forced through economic, social and political
violence to tear up all that is known and move to start a new life elsewhere. It seems, now, to be
a common experience, a product of our time. Perhaps it is best describe as a loss of continuity
between the past and the future; a loss of connection between our dead and those yet to be born.
And, perhaps, this sensation of loss is what brought the people who made these pieces to the
same space, the site of these plays. It is one of the things that has joined us with audiences
everywhere.”
“… the act of collective imagination itself creates a site.”
“What can grow on this site of loss? It is strange to suggest that these pieces are
something as static as a ‘site’, since they are constantly shifting and moving. As are the people
involved in their creation. So if they are ‘sites’ or places in themselves then they are places of
passage. Passing places. Such as you find on single track roads in the mountains. When a drive
travelling in the opposite direction is forced to give way to allow both to continue their journeys,
there is a curiously intimate moment of contact as one waits and the other passes. What is
marvelous is not the passing but what passes between; passed through the look, the
acknowledgement, the gesture. And travelling with these pieces to many places in the world it is
this which creates a sense of belonging. What passes between. The pieces become part of a kind
of nomad hospitality. As a collaborator I have constantly received this hospitality from my
fellow makers, and as a performer it is something I have received from audiences everywhere.
This is why I can feel at home almost anywhere. It is also why I feel I can go on.”
“This is not simply a personal phenomenon but also reflects and expresses the time we
are living in. The feeling of rupture is being modified maybe transcended by a new sense of
intimacy across great distances. To simply call it communication is to underestimate it. It is
passing of secrets. In the same way our forebears attended to the essential needs that gave
meaning to their lives, perhaps we need to give this passing communication the same quality of
attention – the attention that was once given to the eternal” (Methuen Drama, ix-x).

6. INTERVIEW
[1999 – Giannachi & Luckhurst (On Directing: Interviews with Directors)]
“Simon McBurney, an actor and writer, was born in Cambridge in 1957. He
studied English at Cambridge University and trained at the Jacques Lecoq school
in Paris. In 1982 he co-founded Theatre de Complicite with Annabel Arden and
Marcello Magni; he is Artistic Director of the Company. His work with
Complicite includes: Put It On Your Head (1983), A Minute Too Late (1984),
More Bigger Snacks Now (1985), FoodStuff (1986), Please Please Please (1986),
Alice in Wonderland (1987), Anything for a Quiet Life (1987), The Visit (1989,
Almeida, Royal National Theatre, Riverside Studios), My Army Parts One and
Two (1989), The Winter’s Tale (1992), The Street of Crocodiles (1992-4, Royal
National Theatre and West End), The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol (1994), Out of
a House Walked a Man (1994, co-production with the Royal National Theatre)
and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1997, Royal National Theatre).
What is your starting point as a director?
“The sensation is that I start with nothing because nothing exists. The beginning,
the origin of a piece of theatre is never clear, even if it is an established play, because the
play consists of words on a page and this in itself does not qualify those words as theatre.
The words may appear to be something substantial in themselves, but they are not. How
many time have I been to a performance of a Shakespeare plays and had the feeling that
the play itself was not good because the theatre wasn’t good? There is a curious and very
different sensation when you apparently have something in your hands – a play – and
when you have nothing but fragments, scraps, and imaginings when you are devising; yet
strangely I feel I start from the same place: until I start to feel and experience something,
there is nothing.
I often ask myself what the origin is for doing piece and I have to conclude that
there is no origin: If you start looking for a single point of departure you will never find it
– as historians we all impose a neat structure on the past. One of the things I find
interesting about the beginning of a piece is what pushed my desire in the first place; I’ll
have an impulse and during rehearsals I’ll go miles and miles away from it only to return
to it, to revisit and refine the point of departure.
The beginning of a piece is something to do with our relationship with time, and
this is one of the principal concerns in my work. The beginning is always now. I’m not
being deliberately obscure when I say this, I’m always struck by how a piece of theatre
varies from night to night, and by how much it is made anew. That crucial percentage of
difference has an enormous impact in the minds of the audience. I’ve made pieces that
I’ve imagined would be continually successful and then suddenly I find that they don’t
function as I thought they would. So the beginning of a piece invokes an incredible
tentativeness within me. The ideas that I originally had disappear once work begins. I
think I have to say that the work itself is the beginning; it’s only when you ‘do’ that
imaginings become reality. Many directors work out everything in advance, and this

7. kind of theatre is constricted by a straitjacket of ideas and concepts, having no natural
relationship to itself, no natural growth.”
What do you mean by ‘natural growth’?
“When I started working on Daniel Kharm’s piece Out of a House Walked a Man
(1994) no one could believe that I didn’t have a script. Where you begin is where you try
to prepare the ground, and for three weeks I prepared people. One morning I put half an
hour of the show together in fifteen minutes. This could not have happened unless
people’s reservoirs had been filled, unless those people had found out what they had in
common. What filled reservoir was a ‘common language’, and what these people had in
common was an ‘openness’, which allows for growth and development. This is what I
mean by ‘natural’ and what the ‘preparation’ was about. At this point it is also important
to make a clear distinction between what is ‘natural’ and the style of naturalism.
Naturalism is a style in way that melodrama and commedia dell’arte are styles: they are
point of arrival and closure, not point of departure. I am talking about the process that
happens before the imposition of style.
If you cultivate a garden and you plant too many things in it before you have
given it a chance to breath, the garden will become choked up and will never achieve its
own life. The classical Augustan ideas that you can impose an order on nature and that
nature will bend to the human will have disappeared. There is disillusion with the
Romantic ideals. We live in times of an unbelievable desire for certainty generated by
the notion of the economic free market. In our desire for economic certainties we have
lost the sense of time or space to allow for uncertainties.
It’s not for nothing that people in theatre work for years with the same
collaborators. In this sense the beginning is very important; it is a problematic situation
in theatre today because we’ve taken away the centre of theatre – we come at it
attempting to predict the outcome. Thus a producer has an idea and goes to a director and
designer, who help shape it, then they find an actor and they fill in the rest of the
company around that actor. I’m not saying that this system can’t work, but on the whole
it squeezes the lifeblood out of the theatre and it works against the natural origins of a
piece. In this system the writer has a strange satellite position in the work. Often the
writer is no the starting-point, and when the writer is brought in he or she is curiously
disassociated from the work because everyone assumes that their work is finished once
rehearsal start. There can also be an over-reverence for a text, when people argue that the
script is a bible and cannot be diverged from in any way. The structure of work which
appears more natural to me is to begin by acknowledging that the company of actor has
life of its own which cannot be denied, unless you are a life-denying director. It is the
uncertainty, which brings life, which, of course, is why you work for a long time with the
same collaborators. Only through the establishment of trust can you venture into
uncertainty.
If you start from the company of actors together with the script, you admit that
whatever the piece is, it is a combination of things and does not come about through the
exclusion of one or the other. It is right that the director enables this growth to take
place. The designer tills the ground and landscapes it accordingly, and finally the
producer enables this piece to be put on. I don’t want to be misunderstood on this point.

8. I’m talking about the acknowledgement of priorities; a belief in the source of something
which needs to be nurtured into life rather than pollarded into a stunted and forced shape.
I’m fascinated by this notion of the origin of a piece of work. In 1981 Neil
Bartlett and I made a piece of street theatre called Beach Buoys. Initially he wrote to me
and said that he had an image of delicately painted clown playing in the faded resorts of
the south coast: that’s one origin. But the year before he’d come to see me in Paris when
I’d been working with a teacher of clowns: this is another origin. In 1980 we saw each
other’s work in Edinburgh and spent a day talking to find out what we had in common,
and on that day our mutual delight in the gravestones of Greyfriars cemetery could be
seen as a third point of departure. The fourth origin lay in our rehearsals, for which we
had few ideas at first but laughed ourselves to the point of collapse. Each of these are
points of origin, but I like to think that the combination of observation (the graveyard),
preparation (the teaching), proposition (the letter) and action (the rehearsals) were the
combination of events needed for any piece of theatre to achieve its aim. I believe that
we instinctively followed the right journey. At any rate it culminated in us fronting the
rock group Bauhaus at the Hammersmith Odeon before an audience of three thousand
and it was one of the most remarkable evenings in my life.”
Where do you think theatre comes from?
“Gordon Craig said that ‘Dance is the parent of theatre.’” “Intellectually I become
increasingly interested in… ‘why’, and I think it connects with my father’s work as an
archaeologist and his concern with origins.”
“I see dance as a kind of celebration, as an excess of emotion when rhythms are beaten
out is some way. It is to do with an internal journey being expressed in physical
action/movement; as that action find form you arrive at style, at a framework for the dance; they
rhythm gradually become associated with music, and the music becomes specific and is formed
into sounds and words, then it becomes theatre.”
“When you dance together you have a form which represents the collective imagination;
it expresses what we feel together at a particular moment. If theatre is to have power it is when it
manages to touch on what is a primal and universal human need. Words emanate from a
physical act in the body, and for me the body is where you begin in the rehearsal room.”
How do you begin work with you performers?
“The encounter of the first day is always strange. This beginning is a very secret
moment, I think. There is no formula for it. If I sense that people are embarrassed then I might
do something really ridiculous to relax them; if they’re over-relaxed then I might do something
to give them a jolt; if they’re tense I try to relieve their anxiety. I get people up on their feet
immediately. I do this not only to begin moving the body but also to make the actors come at the
subject obliquely. The sudden surprise of discovery can often reveal much more about a text, for
example, than approaching it directly.” “Of course you have to stop and think about what you’re
doing, but ultimately there is only the doing on stage. I try to discover what the dynamic in the
room is, so I start with the people in the room and try to be as open as possible to what they

9. propose. I am well prepared for rehearsals, but it is important to do unexpected things and I am
ready to change my plans at any point.”
“I do not prepare people so that they know more about where they are going. I prepare
them so that they are ready” ready to change, ready to be surprised, ready to seize any
opportunity that comes their way.” “I have no answers at all. There are no formulae.” “…
we’re all terrified of what we don’t know, aghast at the idea of uncertainty. Our faith in priest
has been betrayed and so we placed it in economists, and recently that’s been wearing thin.
Perhaps we don’t know where to put our faith now, but beginning a piece with faith is
important.”
Peter Brook has said that there are two questions that a director needs to ask
themselves throughout their working life. These are: why am I doing theatre?
And how can I make theatre? What do you think about this?
“I think the answer lies in the moment of collective imagining.” “People will go along
with you: they won’t believe you are on a tightrope but they will accept the story.” “Only theatre
can do this, only theatre has this particularity of time. The act of collective imagining creates a
bond between us which links us to the same society and the same sense of being; it confirms
something very particular about the communication between us. The need for this affirmation is
common to all societies, though, of course, forms differ.”
“I think most people would not admit that theatre is essential in their lives. That’s why I
would suggest we need theatre. If we don’t have it we create it.”… “It is a collective ritual
theatre of celebration and we need it.”
“… Brook dares to ask these things. Brook asks questions; he also creates and searches
for a theatre that is ‘alive’. There is a connection, and it is that there is tremendous energy in a
question – even in the movement of the body, the eyes search, the head turns and the hangs open
up. When we demand a hard and fast definition, the answer lies on the ground like a piece of
concrete; what was imaginative possibility becomes banal reality.”
You’ve talked about you fascination with time. Could you elaborate on that?
“Theatre has a relationship with time that no other art form has, in that it exists in the
present, and human being have a need to be present in this life. There is a great deal around us
that appears to bring us into contact with the present, but in fact we tend to live in the recent past
or the immediate future.”
“Theatre is unique in that everything happens in the present, and I think that the only way
theatre can develop is to increase its acknowledgement of the present moment instead of
emulating television… Ultimately on the stage you’ll always see that the door wobbles when
someone closes it, or the theatre lantern gives out. Theatre can only exist if all these elements
are celebrated as an integral part of it, not focused on as shortcomings.”
“We tend to be preoccupied with what we will have next, and that is linked to exchange
of money and our obsession with materiality: there is no end to this mountain of money we wish
to accumulate. This has led to a desire to spend less and less time on things: … as a result move
[we] move further away from the present. The present is no measured in milliseconds.”

10. What are your thoughts on audience?
“Audience and the acknowledgment of audience are fundamental to me: there has to be
that thread of companionship.” “… focusing the way we spoke the soliloquies: we didn’t speak
them to thin air but directly to the audience. That acknowledgement of audience has to happen
all the time. When something supposedly ‘goes wrong’ in the performance, far from ruining the
atmosphere it makes the whole experience so much more intense… they didn’t stop their
suspension of disbelief.” “The sense of the present became palpable and the audience was made
much more aware that anything might go wrong or change at any given moment. On these
occasions the applause we received had a quite different quality to it than is usual: the audience
realized that they had a complicit participation in a creative act.”
“Historically styles have developed in the theatre that have placed more distance between
the audience and the performance.” “One of the problems in the twentieth century has been the
death of popular theatre: variety and music hall have been swallowed up by television, which has
nothing of the ‘presence’ of theatre. So theatre has become a place for middle-class intellectuals.
Theatre has to re-seize its language, its theatricality.”
What do feel you are doing as a director?
“In the early shows I think we created circumstance in which we were able to imagine and
create.” “…every aspect was geared to opening our imaginations and amusing ourselves so that
we could be as creative as possible. We made ourselves writers as well as actors.”
“When I direct I come from the viewpoint of an actor, and everything I do is linked to
releasing the creativity of the actor. I want them to understand the form of what they are doing;
if they’re acting in a play I want them to understand the themes. I want them to hold the piece in
their hands; but that understanding is not an intellectual process, it is a physical one, they have to
feel it.”
“I constantly had to invent circumstances, games, and environments where actors would
see what they were doing but still be happy to spiral off creatively. I developed a whole
language of transformation with them, a language which enable them to control the imaginative
leap from one medium to another. People talked of the choreography, but it wasn’t
choreographed; instead, through innumerable improvisations the actors physically learned to
shift together, like a flock of starlings.” “This required enormous physical discipline and they
worked extremely hard every day; it is this discipline of body and voice that is fundamental in
my work.”
Are there preoccupations that recur in your work?
“It’s too easy to create a historical pattern for your work. I work instinctively and then
see that there is a formal shape to a piece that I didn’t expect.”
Are you aware of influences in your work?
“As a child I grew up with pantomime…” “Someone called Enid Welsford lived next
door; she loved commedia dell’arte and wrote a book called The Fool and she had quite and

11. influence on me. I grew up without television; my mother wrote us plays and we performed
them – I loved that. From an early age I was aware of what bored me in theatre.” “I’d go see
anything. There was a sense of enormous freedom, as though things could go in any direction.
It was a climate of imagination and creativity which was not bound by economic success and that
rubbed off on me.”
It was never my intention to become a director; I’ve always been an actor.” “I don’t feel
I have control in the sense of knowing and planning where I’m going. I don’t know what I’m
doing next. I always experience an enormous release of creativity when I’m performing myself.”
“… Theatre is a collaborative process and I would stress that all the actors and artist we have
worked with over the years have been integral to what has emerged. I knew the kind of theatre I
was interested in and wanted. It gradually evolved that I would sometimes stand on the outside,
though I much prefer to be on the inside as well as the outside.”
Can you talk more about the theatre language you develop amongst the
actors?
“I am adamant about unifying people through a common language. Parameters of
communication are essential in the rehearsal room. You can’t make assumption. Once you’ve
built up a common language you can work very fast. By language I mean a physical, vocal,
musical and architectural language: all those elements which make up a theatre language.
Sometimes I leave the actors to prepare something which we then look at; it can be tremendously
liberating for actors to work without the director. What matters is that when you say something,
the other person understands; I mean understanding unconsciously as well as consciously.” “…
This work is always linked to the central aim of increasing awareness and communication. The
theatre language you move towards is not a constant one, it is defined by the material in front of
you. Hence the quality of the communication between the actors directly helps the evaluation of
what the choice you make on a given piece are appropriate or not.” “… There is only the
development of tact, that is, an ability to make the right choice from a myriad of possibilities.”
“Theatre is not how you are in real life, but the quality of the illusion you can create on
stage.”
Can you work as you want in this country?
“We don’t work only in this country; we come from several countries and we work in
several countries. Wherever you end up there is always this problem of space as well as time
and money…” “Sometimes we made very good work in hideous circumstances. Sometime it’s
right to do a piece in three weeks; at other times you feel you need twelve months. Sometimes it
can be beneficial if circumstances are not as you desire them to be; this creates an energy of
resistance and a determination to bring something to life in a deathless landscape.”
“There are moments when the sheer tyranny of the lack of resources stifles the spirit.
Many times in the past five years I’ve felt that I couldn’t go on. Nevertheless there are times
when I’m happy to make something out of nothing; it’s an ethos I grew up with.” “It is
important that everything you wish to play with in the performance is present during the creative
process, otherwise it’s impossible to make it live when you get on to the stage. For me objects I
use are like words on a page; the rules of their movement are like grammar and syntax. The way

12. they are integrated makes them articulate; their eloquence lies in the respect with which you
touch them. Their stillness highlights their movement, just and silence underpins poetry. The
circumstances of your work must, therefore, coincide with the respect with which you threat your
art.” “We have to invent our own circumstances, as we have no to reinvent our theatre.”

13. INTERVIEW
[The interview took place in the rehearsal rooms of the English Touring Company in Waterloo on
February 3rd, 2006 (although it was subsequently revised through email correspondence in 2007-8).]
Simon McBurney: Shifting under/soaring over the boundaries of Europe
Introduction to Interview – Stephen Knapper [p. 233–235]
“[…] the company’s inimitable style of visual and devised theatre with an emphasis on
strong, corporeal, poetic and surrealist image supporting text was consolidated by the invitation
to create for the national stage.”
“Although many of his productions have dealt with specifically European themes… in
the interview he aligns himself more particularly with an international search for the roots,
meaning and vitality of the theatrical event in the world of late modern consumer capitalism.
[…] in 2002 he signified an overt commitment to the cause of anti-globalization and makes a
plea for recognition of the crucial role theatre plays in the establishment of a collective human
community. His acting, particularly now in cinema, informs his directing to the extent that he
has difficulty being defined as solely a director” (Delgado & Rebellato, 234-5).
Interview: [p. 235–246]
“I would… say that an awful lot of the time I don’t think of myself as a director, simply a
director. I think simply about the way that I have come to do what I do. I began making theatre
with a small group of people in the 1980’s and the intention was simply to make the kind of
theatre that I didn’t see: a theatre which was largely a place that combined several different
disciplines. So you weren’t just being an actor but also a writer and an explorer, a maker of
things, and you felt free to do whatever the fuck you wanted to do. My opinion of that time was
that if I wanted to be in theatre, if I wanted to act in theatre, if I want to make theatre, then I
should simply do it. I had no time to hang around and say I would like to do this and wait until it
happens. I simply started making it and doing it and tell the stories that I wanted to tell, which
were often very simple and frequently they were stories about the minutiae of life around me as I
saw it. Very often they were based on tiny moments which were then exploded into scenes
which were then put together and then suddenly there was a piece of theatre.”

14. “It was the height of Thatcherism: we felt powerless; we felt kind of assaulted as young
people. But looking back I suppose the subject matter… was rooted in a search for
understanding simply where we were.”
“It was also hugely motivated by the fact that we like to make people laugh. That in
itself gave meaning to the piece because people have always said that the tragic is somehow
more serious: comedy is light, artificial and escapist. But of course, it always seems to most
comics that the opposite is true: that the tragic very often preserves an illusion of human dignity
whereas if you look at the world around us there is very often no dignity in humanity (certainly
in the way that the Western world is going about its business currently). So glorifying it with
great and serious tragic intent seemed to me at the time extraordinarily pretentious, and laughter
seemed to cut through and expose all that – which was why I hated being laughed at in real life
because it exposes the truth and it’s not always palatable to see ourselves for what we truly are.
So, necessarily, humor was part of it.”
“What I see now, in all the shows, is the constant question: what the fuck are we doing?
Who are we and what does it mean to be who we are? On one level everything about being
British or whoever we were was completely clear. It was assumed to be a certain set of values, a
certain way of life and yet it was quite clear that there was something about the past which was
not what people said it was. There was a vast nostalgia in the 1980s propagated by Thatcher
particularly” (Delgado & Rebellato, 235-7).
“What interested me were the tiny gestures that people lived out in their everyday lives
behind which were oceans of despair and unhappiness (Delgado & Rebellato, 237).
“We wanted consciously and unconsciously, to create what I would see whenever I used
to go to rock concerts in the 1970s: an event which people lived through. It seemed to me that
very often there was more theatre in a rock concert, or more theatre in contemporary dance. It
seemed that dance had stolen the language of theatre […]. If you went to any rock concert at the
time… they took the language of theatre and they exploited it; whereas of course theatre itself
was kind of retreating into its shell” (Delgado & Rebellato, 237-8).
“The action was very important; what people did was as important as what they said – not
that what they said was not important: on the contrary. We wrote our pieces of dialogue and text
very carefully, we tried to make them funny, place the jokes just right and so on. But because we
were living in an era without any particular beginning, middle or end, where there was no great
story to tell, the stories became tiny stories, which were then explored vertically rather than
horizontally. Rather than saying this thing happened ant then that thing happened, we said this
thing happened and that thing happened simultaneously” (Delgado & Rebellato, 238).
“I had no particular ambitions in theatre. I knew that I loved acting. I knew I wanted to
do whatever the fuck I wanted to do and that I didn’t want to be bound by the idea of
conventional social structures as regards that form” (Delgado & Rebellato, 238).
“Yeah, I want to see Peter Brook and the Bouffes du Nord […]. You saw everything –
dance, theatre, movement theatre, bits of weird mime, sort of séances and performance art and
even saw the Living Theatre […]. But I had no intention to become a director, ever. I was much
too irresponsible but I loved improvisation. That was very important to me as it was to all those

15. people who grew up at that time. That’s the way all the theatre-makers I know who grew up at
that time worked. We worked through improvisation” (Delgado & Rebellato, 240).
“To the visual aspect. Simply because as an actor I was used to playing from a very
young age. I liked to play, so I liked doing things. On a stage I wanted to do something, fiddle
with this or that and have people watch what you do. Not just declaim to people” (Delgado &
Rebellato, 240-1).
“I had a teacher who said that if an actor has forgotten what it is to play as a child they
should not be an actor. The amusement of developing an action and what occurs within that
action; what is involved in playing is living out imaginative acts constantly. Constantly
involving your imagination to take you… constantly involving stories which rise and fall and
change. The notion of playing as opposed to acting has always been incredibly important”
(Delgado & Rebellato, 241).
“It’s very important to have a good time. It’s very important to amuse yourself, I think. I
don’t quite know what my process is sometimes; I mean, you know you tend to do things the
same way, you tend to bring the same things into the rehearsal room and you tend to more or less
start your day at ten and finish it at six…” (Delgado & Rebellato, 241).
“One of the hardest things… is how you bind people together. What is the nature of
social interaction? What is it that binds a group together? […] what is it that motivates theatre
at all? What’s behind it? Do we need it in any context, in any place, at any time, in the human
environment, the human world, wherever we are? We live in the generation that can … get on a
plane and go anywhere in the world. We can be within a matter of days anywhere and, of
course, we can now be in touch within a matter of seconds with anybody in the world” (Delgado
& Rebellato, 241-2).
“So we have access to each other and, at the same time, we have destroyed enormous
quantities of things which actually root us physically and psychologically to where we are and
give us meaning in our lives. We are constantly going, what does this actually mean? In
reaction, people become ever more obsessed with the exterior of things and become ever more
confused, have ever more encounter with their darker sides. One of the things I suppose that has
constantly interested me when you are working in the theatre is what is a piece of theatre? Why
do it? Why is it there? (Delgado & Rebellato, 242).
“I think that it is quite clear that everybody acts things out. It’s how our brains work; we
are constantly acting. We are constantly producing events and – it seems to me – in the same
way s as we produce music. Similarly, we can ask, is music essential to life? Is it on every level
essential? Well, one of the interesting aspects of music is that part of the brain is dedicated to the
understanding or the decoding of music and as we know every part of the human body is there
for a reason. So this necessity within us to play and acts things out seems to be a necessary part
of what it is to be human” (Delgado & Rebellato, 242).
“So why the theatre? Well, the image of the theatre is the image of the human
community. You perform to a group of people. One of the aspects of music or dance or an event
within the human community is that it binds the community together. It has an essential function
because if we are only at each other’s throats we can’t survive. So some sort of social coherence

16. is necessary for us not simply to go crazy like lemmings and throw ourselves all over the cliff
(though possibly something like that is happening to us now…). So the theatre now, in a sort of
distant echo, reflects the event of making and remaking the human community” (Delgado &
Rebellato, 242-3).
“We make funny little pieces of theatre, we have dinner parties which are actually in
many ways theatrical events. People applaud when somebody has actually made a dish. ‘Oh!’
we applaud. We have birthday parties. We have marriages. We have weddings. We have
funerals. We have celebrations when you are twenty-one, when you are thirty, when you are
forty, when you are fifty, when you are sixty, when you are seventy, when you are seventy-five.
We are making and remaking theatrical events all the time. People have always signaled theatre
is coming to an end, ‘People don’t go to the theatre anymore.’ There’s more people going to the
theatre now than fifty years ago in terms of theatrical events” (Delgado & Rebellato, 243).
“People need theatre. So what is going on when they go and see it? What they need is
not just actors or a good play but that the audience is full. Without the audience theatre does not
exist. It doesn’t exist like a film as an object on its own. It can only exist with an audience.
Further than that, in fact, it only exists in the minds of the audience. It doesn’t exist on stage
because if you go up on the stage there’s nothing there. It’s a complete illusion. You see very
quickly people changing and pretending and you come up close to them and there isn’t anything.
It is only with the distance and in the minds of the audience that the theatre exists” (Delgado &
Rebellato, 243).
“What happens when the audience watches a piece of theatre is that they imagine and
they imagine almost the same things at the same instant. They recognize this when they laugh
together and they also recognize it when they weep. They recognize it when there is that
moment of holy silence and when they recognize – perhaps unconsciously – the lie: the modern
lies that we are all individual who are not connected with other people, whose internal lives are
entirely their own. Because at the moment when you all imagine together you imagination, your
consciousness is joined as a whole and you know at that moment that you are not alone. This is
absolutely fundamental because we believe more than anything else that only we can think the
things that we thing. Only I – me – only I think like that. Nonsense. We all think and we think
together and our internal lives are a much a part of the collectivity as our external lives. The
collective experience.
That is where theatre is important. It tells us who we are, which is not one person but
many” (Delgado & Rebellato, 244).
“I’m just talking about the act of theatre. In terms of specific theatres, specific buildings,
there are massive variations. […]. So what I say is not true of all theatre but is true of theatre.
And the act of theatre can take many different forms; so that, for example, theatre in
another culture doesn’t necessarily have the form that we have developed since the Renaissance”
(Delgado & Rebellato, 244).
“Yes, but that is the form of the event. It is very different to the form that we would
employ, even though most people when they go to theatre will make an event of it. The event of
theatre begins before the theatre. They say, we will meet here. They meet whoever they’re
meeting, then they go to the theatre; then they come out and then they discuss it and then they go

17. to a meal. So the vent of theatre is always something other than the theatre, which is why of
course there’s an enormous problem with theatre criticism. Because you have these people
rushing in to see a piece of theatre and rushing home and writing” (Delgado & Rebellato, 245).
“I think they are rarely capable of seeing what is in front of them. Very often because
they are simply thinking of something else while they are watching it. They are already thinking
of what they are going to write rather than engaging with wheat is in front of them. Mind you,
my God, it must be a frightful life being a theatre critic. Imaging seeing all that theatre. It must
be absolutely ghastly. It must be appalling because you can’t pick and choose what you want to
go and see” (Delgado & Rebellato, 245).
“[…]. Everybody collaborates. It’s a collaborative art form. Even a playwright might
write the play, Then you have to have a director and some actors. Theatre will always be
collaborative and some of the least successful plays that I have ever seen have been those which
have been wholly – and in a holy way – reverent to every word of the writer. All theatre is like
life. Forever changing, surprising and the moment it doesn’t change, it’s not alive and there isn’t
any point. Inevitably, if you work in the way that I do, everyone has their own opinion as to how
it comes together or about what happens. That’s the way they see it” (Delgado & Rebellato,
245-6).

18. Productions:
Put It On Your Head [1983]
A Minute Too Late [1984-5]
More Bigger Snacks Now [1985]
Please, Please, Please [1986]
Foodstuff [1986]
Burning Ambition [1987]
Anything for a Quiet Life [1987; revival 1989]
Ave Maria [1988]
The Phantom Violin [1988]
The Lamentations of Thel [1989]
The Visit [1989; revival 1991]
My Army Parts I and II [1989-91]
Help! I’m Alive [1990]
The Street of Crocodiles [1992-4; 1st revival 1994; 2nd revival 1998]
William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale [1992]
The Three Lives Lucie Cabrol [1994-6; revival 1995]
Out of a house walked a man… [1994-5]
Foe [1996]
Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle [1997]
To the Wedding (BBC Radio 3) [1997]
Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs [1997-8] – Broadway; John Golden Theater
The Vertical Line [1999]

19. Mnemonic [1999-2001; 1st revival 2001; (BBC Radio 3) 2002; 2nd revival 2002-3]
Light [2000]
The Noise of Time [2000-2]
So Much Things To Say French and Saunders Live in 2000.
The Elephant Vanishes [2003-4]
A Disappearing Number [2003]
Strange Poetry [2004]
William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure [2004]
A Minute Too Late [2005]
Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui [2008] – New York (starring Al Pacino)
Arthur Miller’s All My Sons [2008] – Broadway; Gerald Schoenfeld Theater
(starring Patrick Wilson & Katie Holmes)
Shun-Kin [2009]
Samuel Beckett’s Endgame [2009]
A Dog’s Heart [2010]
Hive Mind [2010]

20. Praise:
“The Street of Crocodiles is inspired by the life and stories of Polish writer Bruno Schulz
(1892–1942). It captures the vast landscapes of Schulz’s extraordinary imagination and the
startling absurdity and sensuality of his work” (Independent on Sunday).
“The Street of Crocodiles: “… has a lightness of texture that perfectly counterpoints the
underlying gravity of Bruno Schulz stories on which it its based…” (Michael Billington,
Guardian).
The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol: “An unsentimental evocation of peasant life, a hymn
to the tenacity of love and a Brechtian fable about the world’s unfairness” (Guardian).
The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol: “You follow this Complicite version [of John Berger’s
story] as intensely as you would read a Grimms’ fairytale” (Alastair Macaulay, Financial
Times).
Mnemonic: “Dwelling on memory and origins, it manages to be brilliantly original and
unforgettable” (Independent).
Mnemonic: “…connects the seemingly unconnected: past with present, you and me, the
songs we share, the stories we once told and the stories we tell now” (Lyn Gardner, Guardian).
A Disappearing Number: “McBurney has always had a gift for turning ideas into visual
poetry and making the abstract concrete, and this swirling couple of hours is like watching a
juggler keep all the balls aloft, with help from a superb cast. It’s not just dazzling theatre, but
wise and comforting. Picking up the threads of the company’s masterpiece, Mnemonic, it
suggests we are all linked to one another, even – or perhaps especially – in death” (Guardian).
“A Disappearing Number is pellucid, puckishly funny and terribly poignant, as the
contingent world of pain is contrasted with the self-sufficient aesthetic beauty of the
mathematical realm. The fathomlessly intriguing concept of the infinitely divergent series
(which move closer and closer, without ever becoming two) is made harrowing flesh in the
failure of the modern couple to have a child and become three…” (Independent).

21. Awards & Honors:
2007 Critics Circle Award for Best New Play
A Disappearing Number [winner]
2007 Evening Standard Award for Best Play
A Disappearing Number [winner]
2007 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play
A Disappearing Number [winner]
2005: Appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for Services to Drama
2003 London Evening Standard for the Sydney Edwards Award for Best Director
The Elephant Vanishes [nominee]
2002 Golden Mask Award, Festival Mess, Sarajevo
Mnemonic [winner]
2001 Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience
Mnemonic [winner]
2001 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Achievement Off Broadway for Unique Theatrical Experience
Mnemonic [winner]
2001 Time Out Live Award for Outstanding Achievement
Mnemonic [winner]
2001 Syndicat Professional de la Critique Dramatique et Musicale, Grand Prix de la Critique for Best Foreign Play
Mnemonic [winner]
1999 Critics Circle Award for Best New Play
Mnemonic [winner]
1998 Tony Award Best Direction of a Play
The Chairs [nominee]
1998 Tony Award Best Revival of a Play
The Chairs [nominee] Originally produced by Theatre de Complicite (Simon McBurney: Artistic Director)
1998 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Direction of a Play
The Chairs [nominee]
1998 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Revival of a Play
The Chairs [nominee]
Originally produced by Theatre de Complicite (Simon McBurney: Artistic Director)
1998 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Theatre Choreographer

22. The Caucasian Chalk Circle [winner]
1997 Drama Desk Award Unique Theatrical Experience
The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol Theatre de Complicite (Simon McBurney: Artistic Director) [nominee]
1997 Toronto DORA Award for Best Production of a Play
The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol [winner]
1996 Belgrade Daily Newspaper Politika Prize for Best Director
The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol [winner]
1996 Best Performance of the Belgrade International Festival, voted by the audience
The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol [winner]
1996 Grand Prix of the Belgrade International Festival
The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol [winner]
1995 Barcelona Critics Award for Best Foreign Production
The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol [winner]
1995 The Age Newspaper Critics Award for Creative Excellence at the Melbourne International Festival
The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol [winner]
1994 TMA/Martini Award for Best UK Touring Production
The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol [winner]
1994 Time Out Theatre Award
The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol [winner]
1994 L’Academie Quebecoise du Theatre Award for Best Foreign Production
The Street of Crocodiles [winner]
1994 Dublin Theatre Festival Award for Best Visiting Production
The Street of Crocodiles [winner]
1993 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Play
The Street of Crocodiles [nominee]
1993 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director
The Street of Crocodiles [nominee]
1993 Barcelona Critics Award for Best Foreign Production
The Street of Crocodiles [winner]
1993 Manchester Evening Standard Award for Best Visiting Production
The Street of Crocodiles [winner]

23. Random Facts:
Born Simon Montagu McBurney on August 25th, 1957 in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire,
England, UK.
His zodiac is the Virgo.
He is currently based in London, England.
Simon McBurney began acting in Shakespeare at nine but later switched to comedy at
Cambridge. After graduating, he left Thatcher's Britain to study mime with Jacques
Lecoq in Paris, co-founding the theatre company Complicite (formerly Theatre de
Complicite), which he serves as Artistic Director, now Britain's leading exponent of
visual drama.
His portrait was taken by Richard Avedon for inclusion in the Metropolitan Museum of
Art's special exhibition "Richard Avedon: Portraits" and appears in the book of the same
name.
He is the former partner of actress Jacqueline McKenzie.
He was awarded the O.B.E. (Officer of the order of the British Empire) in the 2005
Queen's New Year’s Honors List for his services to drama.
He has been a best friend of Emma Thompson since they were teenagers.
Ranked #31 in the 2008 Telegraph's list “the 100 most powerful people in British
culture.”
Height: 5' 6½" (1.69 m)
Many have commented on his uncanny resemblance to the controversial Academy Award
Winning film Director Roman Polanski (b. 1933; Paris, France).
Mnemonic / ni’monik / adj. 1 assisting or intended to assist the memory 2 of memory
The total Box Office Gross of films (Since 2001) in which he’s starred is $655.3 Million.

24. Filmography:
(partial)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (post-production) – set to star Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong,
Ciaran Hinds, Steven Graham, Benedict Cumberbatch, Roger Lloyd-Pack, Christian McKay.
2011Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (post-production)
Kreacher (voice)
2011The Borgias (TV series)
Johannes Burchart
2011Jane Eyre
Mr. Brocklehurst
2010Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
Kreacher (voice)
2010Rev. (TV series)
Archdeacon Robert
2010Robin Hood
Father Tancred
2009Boogie Woogie
Robert Freign
2008Body of Lies
Garland
2008The Duchess
Charles Fox
2007The Golden Compass
Fra Pavel
2006The Last King of Scotland
Stone
2006Friends with Money
Aaron
2005Torte Bluma (short)
1994-2004The Vicar of Dibley (TV series)
Cecil / Choirmaster
2004The Manchurian Candidate
Atticus Noyle

25. 2004Human Touch
Bernard
2003Bright Young Things
Sneath (Photo-Rat)
2003Skagerrak
Thomas
2003The Reckoning
Stephen
2000Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein
1999Onegin
Triquet
1999Inside-Out (short)
Market researcher
1998Cousin Bette
Vauvinet
1997The Caucasian Chalk Circle (video)
Azdak, the judge
1997Bicycle Thieves (short)
1996Der Unhold
Brigadier
1994Mesmer
Franz
1994Being Human
Hermas
1994Tom & Viv
Dr. Reginald Miller
1994A Business Affair
Salesman
1991Kafka
Assistant Oscar

26. IMAGES:

28. Bibliography
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 3rd ed. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2009. Print.
Barton, Robert. Style for Actors: A Handbook for Moving Beyond Realism. 2nd ed. New York:
Routledge, 2010. Print.
Brockett, Oscar G., and Robert J. Ball. The Essential Theatre. 7th ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt
Brace College Publishers, 2000. Print.
Collins, Jane, and Andrew Nisbet, eds. Theatre and Performance Design: A Reader in Scenography.
London: Routledge, 2010. Print.
Delgado, Maria M., and Dan Rebellato, eds. Contemporary European Theatre Directors. London:
Routledge, 2010. Print.
Giannachi, Gabriella, and Mary Luckhurst, eds. On Directing: Interviews with Directors. New York:
St. Martin’s Griffin, 1999. Print.
Heddon, Deirdre, and Jane Milling. Devising Performance: A Critical History. Basingtoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Print.
Innes, Christopher, ed. Modern British Drama: The Twentieth Century. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002. Print.
Luckhurst, Mary, ed. A Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama: 1880-2005. Oxford:
Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Print.
McBurney, Simon. Complicite: Plays: 1. London:
Methuen Drama, 2003. Print.
McBurney, Simon, and Matthew Broughton. Light. London:
Oberon Books Ltd, 2000. Print.
McBurney, Simon. Mnemonic. London:
Methuen Drama, 1999. Print.
McBurney, Simon & A Disappearing Number Presentation/Handout from the Fall semester of 2010.
ENG 394: Contemporary Drama. Professor Brook Davis [WFU]. Print.

29. Internet Broadway Database – http://ibdb.com/person.php?id=15601
Internet Broadway Database – http://ibdb.com/person.php?id=69773
Internet Movie Database – http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0564402/
http://www.fandango.com/simonmcburney/filmography/p46876
http://www.complicite.org/flash/
Video – http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/video/2010/sep/22/simon-mcburney-complicite-nomadic-family?
INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
Podcast & Transcript –http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/johntusainterview/mcburney_transcript.shtml
http://search.independent.co.uk/topic/simon-mcburney
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2005/jan/01/theatre2
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/nov/28/dogs-heart-nash-ensemble-review
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/sep/11/a-life-in-theatre-simon-mcburney?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/nov/17/simon-mcburney-endgame-beckett?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/sep/30/mark-rylance-complicite-beckett-endgame?
INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2008/nov/06/arthur-miller-broadway-obama?
INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2007/mar/28/unfinishedsympathyitsworth
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-theatre-de-complicite-1184764.html
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article2280843.ece
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/simon-mcburney/biography/
http://www.videosurf.com/simon-mcburney-19188
http://www.apieceofmonologue.com/2009/09/simon-mcburney-on-becketts-stage.html

30. Further Reading:
Connor, Steven, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004. Print.
Geis, Deborah R. Postmodern Theatric(k)s: Monologue in Contemporary American Drama. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1993. Print.
Harvie, Jen and Andy Lavender, eds. Making Contemporary Theatre: International Rehearsal Processes.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. Print.
Mitter, Shomit and Maria Shevtsova, eds. Fifty Key Theatre Directors. London:
Routledge, 2005. Print.
Schneider, Rebecca and Gabrielle Cody, eds. Re: Direction: A Theoretical and Practical Guide.
London: Routledge, 2002. Print.
Shevtsova, Maria, and Christopher Innes. Directors/Directing: Conversations on Theatre. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009. Print.
Watt, Stephen. Postmodern/Drama: Reading the Contemporary Stage. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1998. Print.

31. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/theater/04complicite.html?_r=1
http://www.playbill.com/news/article/133804-Rylance-and-McBurney-Open-in-Becketts-Endgame-Oct-15-in-West-
End
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/8140673/A-dogged-pursuit.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/simon-mcburney-groundbreaking-theatre-
director-hollywood-actor-and-screenwriter-463930.html
http://theater.nytimes.com/2010/07/17/theater/reviews/17disappear.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/theater/04complicite.html?_r=1
http://www.photographersdirect.com/buyers/search.asp?search=simon%20mcburney
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/8140673/A-dogged-pursuit.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/reviews/article-1220718/Bells-whistles--big-sleep.html
http://photogalleryactor.blogspot.com/2010/05/simon-mcburney-photo-pic.html
http://www.dudleyreed.com/Pages/SimonMcBurney.html
http://geraint-lewis.photoshelter.com/image/I0000TahRnnoKLec
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2004/may/30/theatre1?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
http://chilvers.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/actors/G0000fHkGg.zQrHg/I00001X.SzkM2Tyc
http://www.thecomedystore.co.uk
http://www.footlights.org/history.html.
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/61116/productions/complicites-a-disappearing-number.html
http://broadwayworld.com/people/Simon_McBurney/
http://www.theatermania.com/london/news/04-2010/terry-gilliam-des-mcanuff-simon-mcburney-
bartlett_26692.html
http://movie-gazette.com/13243/simon-mcburney
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/simon_mcburney/
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/contributor/1800405344
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Simon-McBurney/202273848624?sk=wall&filter=2
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Theatre-de-Complicit%C3%A9/108191919214479?sk=info
http://twitter.com/#!/SimonMcBurney