This is Not a Chair: Complicite's Master and Margarita

Liliane Campos (1)

1 PRISMES - PRISMES - Langues, Textes, Arts et Cultures du Monde Anglophone - EA 4398

In this study Liliane Campos links Complicite's Master and Margarita (2011) to the company's previous productions, from The Street of Crocodiles (1992) to Shun-Kin (2008). She develops a close analysis of The Master and Margarita as it was staged at the Avignon Festival in July 2012, arguing that the company's aesthetic is characterized by a tension between narrative fragmentation and visual connections. While their shows overflow with postmodernist multiplicity and division, the urge to connect these 'shards of stories' is a driving force in McBurney's artistic direction. This dynamic is explored here both on a semantic level, as a consequence of Complicite's physical language, and on a narrative level, in their use of framing and frame-breaking devices. The article highlights the company's recurrent themes and the defining traits of their performance style.

Mots clés: Drama; Theatre; Performing Arts; Simon McBurney; Complicite; Bulgakov; aesthetics; fragmentation; Metalepsis; Postmodernism; Narrative; Technology

Domaines: Musique, musicologie et arts de la scène; Littératures

Liliane Campos. This is Not a Chair: Complicite's Master and Margarita. New Theatre Quarterly, 2014, 2 (30), pp.175. ⟨10.1017/S0266464X14000281⟩. ⟨hal-01292502⟩