Actress Kathryn Hunter, who won an Olivier award for the best actress for Durrenmatt's THE VISIT, directed by Simon McBurney, said that when she first met Simon McBurney, she thought that he was incredibly ugly in his physical features but that when she got to know him better, he became incredibly beautiful, and that she said happened with only a very few extraordinary people. As Mumbai, and later Hyderabad gears up to see the much talked about A DISAPPEARING NUMBER, we get talking to Simon McBurney, Artistic Director of the UK based theatre company Complicite, and the man who brings to us a story of some unique individuals, and their beautiful ideas.
Deepa Punjani
Simon, welcome back to Mumbai. This is your second time with a production in India after MEASURE FOR MEASURE. How do you feel about it? Like coming home. The welcome from Prithvi theatre and the technical team at the NCPA has been overwhelming. And very curious and excited to know what Bombay will make of it.
When and how did you conceive the idea for A DISAPPEARING NUMBER? No one time. No one place. Over many years and with many people. Like all our shows. But one initial impulse came from the Sri Lankan writer Michael Ondaatje, who gave me a copy of A Mathematician's apology by GH Hardy in 1997. It opened my eyes to this story.
The British Indian Musician Nitin Sawhney has designed the sound for this production. How did the collaboration come about? Nitin did not design the sound, but wrote an original score. He is a musician I have admired for many years. I invited him to come see MEASURE FOR MEASURE after we returned from India. And we agreed then that we would like to work together on a project one day.... And so we did.
Complicite is regarded as one of the most important physical theatre companies in the UK . Also your company has attraced words like visual theatre, technologically empowered theatre; a theatre where stage design, stagecraft assume as much importance as the text, or more perhaps. The truth could well be between all these observations. On your website, there is also mention of a 'house style' of Complicite with regards to a book curated by your photographer Sarah Ainsle and graphic designer Russell Warren-Fisher. But what is your personal take on the kind of theatre Complicite does and believes in? Contrary to what it says on the website (And I believe the 'house style' remark comes from an observation about the kind of news print we make rather than anything we do on stage!). I would argue there is no 'style' of work. Rather each show finds the means of expression that most suits its subject. I think of myself above all as a story teller. And I use whatever is at hand to tell that story.
You studied theatre at the Jacques Lecoq school in Paris. John O'Mahony's article in The Guardian (2005) says that when you co-founded Complicite in the early eighties with Marcello Magni, Annabel Arden and Fiona Gordon it was largely as a comic mime troupe. How do you see mime, a performance form in its own right, playing a role in the work Complicite does? We have never studied mime nor has mime ever played a part in what we do! Making people laugh of course, is a prerequisite in the theatre as far as I am concerned. It is often thought that comedy is somehow more light weight than tragedy or more artificial. The opposite I believe is true. Tragedy is tender to man's dignity and preserves the illusion that we are some how a noble race, whereas comedy like a knife exposes the truth. Which is that we are all fools. Which is also why we hate being laughed at in real life. Jacques Lecoq died in 1999. He was someone who was able to develop the individual voice of the pupils who he worked with. As he once said, " I am no one. I am merely a neutral point through which you must travel in order to better express what you yourself wish to say."
You have worked as an actor since a very young age and have acted in films too. Do you enjoy both acting and directing equally? Yes. I love doing both.
You have also worked in the USA. What was the experience of working there like? Working in Hollywood is like walking in the fog. You have no idea where you are going, or if you will ever reach anywhere, or if there is any point to anything. But the blindness of it can be relaxing. For a few minutes.... Not much longer. Working in New York is like working without your clothes on in the middle of the street. It always seems as if everyone knows everything about where you are and what you are doing and where you are going and what you are thinking and what the result will be, even before you know it yourself. None the less. I have to say, from working with Al Pacino to Leonardo di Caprio to Dianne Wiest to Katie Holmes, I have always enjoyed myself working in the USA.
Complicite's productions are also seen as a departure from the wordiness of British Theatre in general. But is that a reactionary observation of the kind that Howard Barker's theatre has also been subject to? And does that also mean that Theatre at the West End is still largely about the sanctity of the text? I have no thought about the wordiness or otherwise of theatre in Britain. There is only one criterion in theatre for me. And that is that it should be alive. I love words. But I believe that the 'text' of theatre is about many different elements. Not merely the text you 'say'. There is also the text of what people 'see'. Of what the actors 'do'. And what is heard and seen beyond. That is to say what is inferred by what is happening on stage. The theatre is a multilayed experience which should equally articulate and be eloquent in all its elements. The words, the stories, the acting, the actions, the light, the sound, the music, the costume, the images, the movements, the objects, the space and the place.
Coming back to A DISAPPEARING NUMBER, you must know that Prithvi Theatre, which has hosted the production has been garnering audiences and public interest with a number of events as a run-up to the main shows. Mathematics was a buzzword at Prithvi all through September. But your play is that and more. If you had to tell our audiences to watch this play, what would you say? That we hope we have created something that will not only bend the mind but also break the heart.
Simon, welcome back to Mumbai. This is your second time with a production in India after MEASURE FOR MEASURE. How do you feel about it?
