Complicité

Founded in 1983 by Annabel Arden, Fiona Gordon, Marcello Magni and Simon McBurney (Who is now the Artistic Director); Complicté are a leading devising theatre company who combine all aspects of theatre to focus on the human condition and the 'complicity' between us. They describe themselves on their website as a company who "create work that strengthens human interconnection, using the complicity between performer and audience that is at the heart of the theatrical experience."

MAIN CHARACTERISTICS:

INTERWOVEN STORIES

In Complicté theatre, it is vital to have 2 or more stories that would be connected by a theme and would interweave between each other. It is not strictly episodic theatre as sometimes they could be playing out at the same time at completely different parts of each story.

It is not always apparent what the link between these stories are (at least not straight away) and often the audience has to actively piece together this link. Almost always this link would be a theme that is political and relevant to the time it is conceived, or something that is universal and very personal to us as humans. In doing this, not only does it leave the audience with lots to think about long after the piece's conclusion, but they come to appreciate the message as they start to understand of the runtime of the play.

REAL-LIFE STORIES / MEMORY

The foundations of Complicté are built on memory, and it is often that with devised or even the final performance a personal memory would appear and become the basis for themes or ideas. With memory, Complicté don't just look surface level but would 'magnify' an element or small thing in the memory to focus on and from there an image would be formed.

Once the piece starts to take shape, Complicté would then take a real-life story relating to the theme coming from their memories and stories and interweave it with the other stories. This is usually a story that has twists and turns, with multiple perspectives and is not necessarily well known. 

MULTIMEDIA

Complicté also work a lot with multimedia, utilising many digital technologies such as projections, microphones or even live video recorders during performance to portray chunks of the story or a character's emotion or thoughts at the time. They will also use complex sound systems and effects to give impressions of different landscapes despite the fact it isn't really represented on stage.

They will also use visual or audio cues with this technology so the audience can recognise when a change is happening or a link is being made between the different but interwoven storylines.

OTHER CHARACTERISTICS:

• Mime & Levels of Tension - All founding members of Complicté went to Jacques Lecoq's L'École Internationale de Théâtre and so elements of mime and tension levels can be seen in any Complicté work.
• Puppetry - In accordance with using all aspects of theatre, puppets are often used to either represent a character or idea, or simply for comedic purposes. However this comedy often has an underlying message about the wider themes.
• Focal Prop / Object - With any Complicté theatre, you would have an object or prop which is used throughout the play and represents either the main theme or idea that they want you to take away. This prop is always multi-purpose too and can be used in any of the different stories for different things.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall - Because Complicté are so focused on the audience / performer relationship, they very often break the fourth wall using elements such as direct address to connect with the audience and establish that relationship between the two.
• Physical Theatre & Slow Motion - The use of conveying emotion through physical movement is integral to Complicté as they body language to tell the story. They also utilise slow motion to drag out moments of tension and reinforce what is happening in the story.
• Ensemble & Multi-Roling - As well as being collaborative with the audience, Complicté first look to be collaborative with themselves. They look to work as one and this aids other aspects such as their physical theatre with choral movement.
• Senses - In a couple of Complicité's works, all senses are utilised including touch and smell and sometimes they are taken away like sight. This aids in one of their main characteristics of audience memory and connecting them to the story on stage by making them focus on their own senses that you might not typically use in traditional theatre.
• Minimal Set - Complcité sets or often quite simple or bare even when depicting detailed landscapes, but this is purposeful as it allows the audience to use their imagination to see themselves what is being portrayed. This immersion is also aided by one of their main characteristics being their use of technology.
• Comedy / Le Jeu - Because Complicté often cover fairly serious themes, they add some light by having comedic moments or dialogue to ease some tension in the audience after an intense scene. The comedy can also be used though to juxtapose these serious moments or even lure the audience into a false sense of security before hitting them with a serious topic.
• Longevity - Any piece of Complicté theatre should leave you thinking about it for a long time and the messages and themes behind it. In this way it is practically the antithesis to political theatre, however I would argue that Complicté is a lot more political as it is more personable and makes you questions aspects of your life even though it doesn't incite tangible 'change' as Brecht would want.

INFLUENCES:

JOHN BERGER - WAYS OF SEEING

In this essay, John Berger looks at many aspects of our perception of art, and subsequently of life. Simon McBurney took great inspiration from this for how he approaches and what he focuses on in devising, bringing in alternate views of the world and the contrast between the perception of how the world is compared to how it actually is.

When we were initially looking at Complicté's work, we focused on a small extract of this essay (pages 45-47) that focuses on women and how they constantly have to think of their appearance (or 'presence' as John Berger words it) and how unlike men it is an integrated part of them. He also looks at how women are tailored by their appearance to others and specifically men, as it dictates how their life will play out, which makes them constantly aware of this appearance to others and only viewing themselves through how others view them. In other words, they objectify themselves. Berger expresses this by saying, "If a woman throws a glass on the floor, this is an example of how she treats her own emotion of anger and so of how she would wish it to be treated by others. If a man does the same, his action is only read as an expression of his anger."

JACQUES LECOQ (1921-1999)

One of the most well known practitioners, Lecoq is integral to how Complicité work with his style of theatre being one of the core foundations of the whole company. This is no surprise seeing as Simon McBurney, as well as all the other founders, were personally trained by Jacques Lecoq himself at his School of Mime (École internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq).

The three main ideas of Lecoq's work are disponsibilité, le jeu and complicité, translating roughly to openness, play and shared creativity. Of course two of these were directly carried over into their work but all three and their many characteristics and present in any work of Complicité.

PHILIPPE GAULIER (1943-)

On the art of clowning, Gaulier is considered an expert. His more noticable focus is the form of clowning mockery known as 'Bouffon'. This satirical, grotesque physical comedy aims to mock "the-powers-that-be" or taboo subjects from an outsider's perspective, drawing from ancient ideas of the jester or town fool. This is a very early inspiration for Complicité, and elements of this can be seen, though obviously in a more unique form.

MONIKA PAGNEUX (1927-2023)

A German choreographer, Pagneux focuses on personal movement and the vulnerabilities that come with it. Through this, it aims to bring character and personal stories through the physical movement where it otherwise may have been lost. On the Complicité website, they describe her as, "an authority on helping people 're-find the life in their movement on stage'".

COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE

Although Commedia Dell'arte can technically be seen in most theatre, it is especially apparent in Complicité. When the company first got started, they performed not in a standard theatre space but instead improvised on beaches, streets and outside the big theatres in London's Covent Garden; which is very reminiscent of how Commedia would be initially performed. As well as this, Commedia is also seen in their use of archetypal characters and especially physical comedy. This ties in mainly because of Jacques Lecoq studying Commedia Dell'arte before founding his school.

DEVISING

For our devising group, we are using Complicité as our practitioner. As such, we must fully understand how they work and devise as a theatre company. Below is a digestible summary of what is key to working like Complicité for devising, including exercises and techniques that they use to help with create a piece of theatre:

 | COMPLICITÉ DEVISING NOTEBOOK |

Complicité have also compiled their own resource for A-level devising, where they tried to create a devised piece in the style of Complicité whilst working to the specifiactions of A-Level. They documented this process which can be found here:

| COMPLICITÉ DOES A-LEVEL DRAMA |

WORKSHOP:

On the 10th September 2025, we were very lucky to have a workshop with Bronya who has been working with Complicité for the past five years. In this, we covered off how Complicité used physical movement, the space between and taking stimuli from its original idea into something completely abstract. 

The first element we looked, which is important for any Complicité work, was play. We did this with a game called 'The Sun Shines on Me..." which involved quick movement and highlighted moments of suspense and story through the simple act of playing. We then looked to grounding and warming up the body ready for using our whole body to create. This involved tapping and 'waking up' every section of the body working from the top to the bottom.

Once we had properly warmed up, we then moved our focus onto the use of space. This started with us swinging in the space, and seeing where the breath sat the larger the action became, again linking to the suspense in movement. From there we then looked into balancing the space with the Stop/Go exercise, and evolved it by limiting the space in which we moved, and getting one group to watch what stories comes out of people simply moving and stopping in the space. Through this it also highlighted how audience centred Complicité is, as Bronya would ask for our feedback and where we would find the 'scene' getting boring. 

We then explored a vital aspect of Complicité (which originates from Jacques Lecoq) in the Seven Levels of Tension. To do this, we started with going to each extreme with the help of a partner and finding where Tension Level 1 and 7 sat in our bodies. We then worked our way up from 1 all the way to 6 and would come together after each level to discuss how we felt it was physically.

For one of our final focuses in terms of physicality, we looked to using bamboo sticks as a study of the communication of emotion through the space between performers.