Founded in 1983, Complicite is a constantly evolving ensemble of performers and collaborators, now led by Artistic Director Simon McBurney. Complicite's work has ranged from entirely devised work to theatrical adaptations and revivals of classic texts. The Company has also worked in other media; a radio production of Mnemonic for BBC Radio 3, collaborations with John Berger on a radio adaptation of his novel To The Wedding for BBC Radio and The Vertical Line, a multi-disciplinary installation performed in a disused tube station, commissioned by Artangel. Always changing and moving forward to incorporate new stimuli, the principles of the work have remained close to the original impulses: seeking what is most alive, integrating text, music, image and action to create surprising, disruptive theatre. John Berger was born in London in 1926. His many books, innovative in form and far-reaching in their historical and political insight, include To the Wedding, King, and the Booker Prize-winning novel, G. Amongst his outstanding studies of art and photography are Another Way of Telling, The Success and Failure of Picasso, Titian: Nymph and Shepherd (with Katya Berger), and the internationally acclaimed Ways of Seeing. He lived and worked in a small village in the French Alps, the setting for his trilogy Into Their Labours (Pig Earth, Once in Europa and Lilac and Flag). His collection of essays The Shape of a Pocket was published in 2001. His latest novel, From A to X, was published in 2008. The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol, produced by Complicite and based on a story by Berger, toured for three years between 1994 and 1997. About Looking, published by Bloomsbury in April 2009, was the follow-up to the seminal Ways of Seeing, one of the most influential books on art in the 20th century. He died in early 2017.
