Tag: Annabel Arden

Complicite: The Almeida Season and The Visit

Posted on by Phil

Interview with Michael Fry

Michael Fry is the Deputy Director of East 15, University of Essex. He has worked as director and writer across the country including Liverpool Everyman, Nottingham Playhouse, the Young Vic and the Lyric Hammersmith. His adaptations of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Emma and The Great Gatsby have been performed throughout England and America.

Prior to East 15, he was Senior Lecturer in theatre at Coventry University and was Co-Artistic Director of NOT The National Theatre, for whom he directed Simon Gray’s Japes and April de Angelis’ Wild East.

Michael Fry’s chapter on Complicite in British Theatre Companies (1980 – 1994) focuses on the first fifteen years of the company.

Connections to the GCSE, AS and A level specifications

  • Social, cultural, political and historical context
  • Influence
  • Key collaborations with other artists
  • Significant moments in the development of theory and practice
  • Methods of creating, developing, rehearsing and performing
  • Theatrical style

PC: Simon becomes the Artistic Director of Complicite and it is made up of returning associate artists. Now they are even expanding out to produce and support the work of interesting emerging artists. How did that shift from four members to just Simon happen?

MF: Marcello says that it came about after the season at the Almeida. It was kind of unique. I don’t think that it has ever been replicated. That a theatre gives over its entire repertoire to one company to put on something like 14 shows over 11 weeks. That is quite a long time to give over your theatre to a company. Nowadays they might programme Richard III for 11 weeks. At that time most of the programming was for 3 or 4 weeks when Pierre Audi was running it. So they suddenly really made it.

PC: What attracted Pierre Audi to Complicite?

MF: He saw that this was a company that merited a kind of retrospective. They revived most of their early shows as well as developing new ones. The main new one was Dürrenmatt’s The Visit. Marcello says it was the best time that they ever had. There was a huge buzz. The critics who had not always been friendly to them now revered them. And after it was over it was a kind of anti-climax and they all went off to do different things. Simon became sole director shortly after considering moving on as well. He decided to develop the company in a different way from the styles of the other three.

PC: What was the production style and approach for Dürrenmatt’s The Visit?

MF: It was the first time that they had done an existing play text rather than devising the material. And although they credited Maurice Valency as the translator they mucked about with it a lot more than was acknowledged. But they told the exact story of Durrenmatt. I believe his widow thought it was the best production of the play, in terms of the tone. She thought it captured the tragi-comedy that she hadn’t seen in any other productions. I think they suddenly felt free to experiment with style and form, which they hadn’t done in quite the same way when they were devising the material.

PC: Why did they feel that freedom with a text?

MF: Because they were working with a text that allowed them to throw a style on to an existing play. Most young directors prefer to do the classics, then they are reviewed for their work on it rather than the play. In that sense it is comparable with that – the critics were not reviewing the subject matter or content; they were reviewing Complicite’s style.

PC: It is interesting to think how criticism can influence creativity. Do you think they made the decision to do that specific text because they thought it would get attention?

MF: I don’t think it was as calculated as that I think it was more they could see that this particular text suited what they did. Although Annabel is credited as the director it was quite obviously Simon who was the co-director – He was playing the central male role – it was his idea. Simon and Annabel would go home every night and talk about what had happened and where they wanted to take it.

Summary

  • The Almeida theatre gave over its entire repertoire to Complicite to put on something like 14 shows over 11 weeks.
  • After the Almeida season Simon decided to develop the company in a different way from the styles of the other three original members
  • Doing The Visit by Dürrenmatt allowed them to throw a style on to an existing play.

Complicite: The Influence of Jacques Lecoq

Posted on by Phil

Interview with Michael Fry

Michael Fry is the Deputy Director of East 15, University of Essex. He has worked as director and writer across the country including Liverpool Everyman, Nottingham Playhouse, the Young Vic and the Lyric Hammersmith. His adaptations of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Emma and The Great Gatsby have been performed throughout England and America.

Prior to East 15, he was Senior Lecturer in theatre at Coventry University and was Co-Artistic Director of NOT The National Theatre, for whom he directed Simon Gray’s Japes and April de Angelis’ Wild East.

Michael Fry’s chapter on Complicite in British Theatre Companies (1980 – 1994) focuses on the first fifteen years of the company.

Connections to the GCSE, AS and A level specifications

  • Social, cultural, political and historical context
  • Influence
  • Methods of creating, developing, rehearsing and performing
  • Theatrical style

PC: How did the training with Lecoq influence their work?

MF: Simon articulates that Lecoq was the biggest influence on Complicite in its initial years. Lecoq’s ideas on playfulness – le jeu – were very influential. Lecoq really forced his students to be spontaneous, he put them on the spot. Lecoq wouldn’t have said “be funny” but when they were spontaneous and forcing an audience to watch them they tended to go for comedy rather than pathos. Students that were contemporaries of Simon and Marcello say they were always the two that you watched at Lecoq because they were the funniest. I think they learnt their mutual sense of humour through Lecoq. Simon was a stand up but his performance level through Lecoq became more subtle and mature and much more reliant on the body than a stand up is.

PC: Why did they choose to base themselves in Britain after training in Paris?

MF: Probably because Simon and Annabel had connections here and they thought they would start to get money from the Arts Council. None of them were from France. Maybe inside they knew that their work was going to be satirising the British and therefore they needed to begin it in Britain. The British have the ability to laugh at themselves and enjoy being satirised. And I think they got that.

PC: In those early days do you think there was a drive and a need to be popular as that would allow them to continue making work?

MF: I don’t think so. Accessible maybe. I don’t think that they were consciously driven and ambitious enough to know what their endgame was. They are the company that least panders to what they think the audience wants to see or what the Arts Council wants to hear. Of all the companies they are not the least bit interested in doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

PC: How do Complicite find inspiration for their work then?

MF: Now in the last fifteen years or so I think it comes from Simon’s intellect and his huge and eclectic reading and huge and eclectic social circle. A lot of the ideas that he bases the material on comes from an idea suggested by a friend of his: You should read that – you should have a look at that. In the first fifteen years again it was usually Simon who had the inspiration but I think it was slightly less intellectual as such and more instinctive so the second show was responding to the death of his father.

PC: Did their early work have a distinctive style?

MF: All their applications to the Arts Council describe themselves as a ‘physical theatre group’ even at times ‘a mime group’. Their applications for the Arts Council were all about being like Trestle. You don’t see that same physicality in the productions today. They are much more intellectually driven than focused on physicality. Maybe because there are so many physical theatre companies and it can’t be taken any further.

PC: Would you describe their style as distinctiveness then? They set out to be different?

MF: I don’t think self-consciously. Simon is not self-consciously trying to be different and find the next thing. It is just how it works.

Summary

  • Lecoq’s ideas on playfulness – le jeu – were very influential for Complicite
  • Simon was a stand up but his performance level through Lecoq became more subtle and mature and much more reliant on the body than a stand up is.
  • They wanted to satirise Thatcher’s Britain and the British have the ability to laugh at themselves and enjoy being satirised.
  • They are the company that least panders to what they think the audience wants to see or what the Arts Council wants to hear.
  • The work comes from Simon’s intellect and his huge and eclectic reading and huge and eclectic social circle.