Simon McBurney

»The maverick genius of British theatre«

The Times

Simon McBurney is an award-winning actor, writer, director and co-founder of the theatre company »Complicité«. His works range from site-specifiic installations to the reinvention of classic texts on Broadway, therefore continuously resists defiinition, but has always been intimately bound up with music. His opera productions to date have been performed at opera houses around the world, including Alexander Raskatov’s »A Dog’s Heart«, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s »The Magic Flute«, Igor Stravinsky’s »The Rake’s Progress« and Alban Berg’s »Wozzeck«.
With his brother Gerard McBurney, he created works like »Weimar Nightfall« and »Strange Poetry« at Los Angeles Philharmonic and the »Complicité« productions »Out of a House Walked a Man…« at the Royal National Theatre and »The Noise of Time« with the Emerson String Quartet at Lincoln Center. He has collaborated with artits like Peter Maxwell Davies, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Simon Rattle, Tom Waits, Nitin Sawhney, Pet Shop Boysand Honjoh Hidetaro.

Recent work with Complicité includes »Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of The Dead«, »Beware of Pity« (with Schaubühne Berlin),»The Master and Margarita«, »A Disappearing Number«, and »Pet Shop Boys Meet Eisenstein«. Other directing work includes the Broadway highlight »All My Sons« and Berthold Brecht’s »The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui« in New York with Al Pacino
in the main role.

As an actor, he has appeared in many feature films, including »The Pale Blue Eye«, »Mission: Impossible –Rogue Nation«, »The Theory of Everything«, »Magic in the Moonlight«, »Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy«, »Jane Eyre« and »The Duchess and The Last King of Scotland«. Television appearances include J K Rowling’s »The Casual Vacancy«, »Carnival Row« for Amazon Prime, and BBC TV’s »Rev.«.

He was the first British »Artiste Associé« at Festival d’Avignon in 2012 with »The Master and Margarita« opening the Festival. In 2009 he was the first nonJapanese artist who was awarded the Yomiuri Theatre Award »Grand Prize« for Best Director for »Shun-kin« and he was the recipient of the 2008 Berlin Academy of Arts Konrad Wolf Prize for »Europe’s Outstanding Multidisciplinary Artists«.

»Simon is one of the world's most interesting theatre and opera directors today. Many years ago, I saw a play by him about Shostakovich's string quartets with the Emerson String Quartet in Los Angeles. I was very fascinated by it. That's why I offered him a production for the opening of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2003. And it was always my hope and dream to do a real opera production with him one day. Now it's finally coming to fruition, which I'm very happy about.«

Esa-Pekka Salonen
Conductor

Als Schauspieler hat Simon McBurney in vielen Spielfilmen mitgewirkt, darunter »The Pale Blue Eye«, »Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation«, »The Theory of Everything«, »Magic in the Moonlight«, »Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy«, »Jane Eyre« und »The Duchess and The Last King of Scotland«. Im Fernsehen trat er unter anderem in J. K. Rowlings »The Casual Vacancy«, in »Carnival Row« auf Amazon Prime und der BBC Serie »Rev.« auf.

Er war der erste britische »Artiste Associé« beim Festival d’Avignon 2012, wo er mit »The Master and Margarita« das Festival eröffnete. 2009 wurde er als erster nicht-japanischer Künstler mit dem »Grand Prize« des Yomiuri Theatre Award für die beste Regie von »Shun-kin« ausgezeichnet und erhielt 2008 den Konrad-Wolf-Preis der Akademie der Künste Berlin in der Kategorie »Europas herausragende multidisziplinäre Künstler«.

Khovanshchina