We try to place the human body in relation to the image all the time, so it's never a kind of a backdrop, but it's more of ...a much more integrative experience. Simon McBurney More Quotes by Simon McBurney More Quotes From Simon McBurney Yes it was chaos, working through chaos, you never quite knew what you were going to do each day, but you knew that you wanted to make something. Simon McBurney never-quit theatre each-day I think it was a desire to be able to find my own voice. I think that was the big urge within me. Simon McBurney voice desire thinking Everyone sees something different in 'Endgame': a biblical apocalypse, a portrait of painful co-dependency, a confession of guilt and dignity in the face of death, a night of baffling hopelessness, a meaningless babble. Each interpretation reveals an absurd truth - not about the play, but about the person watching it. Simon McBurney face truth night death 'The Magic Flute,' I think, is fundamentally asking what is it to change people's consciousness. Simon McBurney think magic change people Theatre is the art form of the present: it exists only in the present, and then it's gone. Simon McBurney present only theatre art Theatre is about the collective imagination... Everything I use on-stage is driven by the subject matter and what you might call the text - but that text can be anything, from a fragment of movement or music to something you see on a TV. Simon McBurney you music imagination matter I allow people to create, but I'm also marshalling everybody, which is difficult for my creativity, as I'm like a referee. Everybody else is kicking a ball. It is very messy. From the mess, though, you refine what is there. Simon McBurney you messy creativity people So you might say, 'Why do you end up making theatre in a world in which there is already too much of that? Creating layer upon layer of artifice?' Perhaps the function is to pierce through that cloud and show reality - so the function of art is to make things - to show: 'Hang on, this is real.' Simon McBurney you reality world art When I was an adolescent in England, at school we had to read 'Death of a Salesman.' I remember feeling incredibly moved by the portrayal of these people and the idea with which Miller broached the whole subject of failure or failed systems, or the way that people are crushed by a system in which they find themselves. Simon McBurney failure death people school I don't have what German directors call 'a concept' - a solid, fixed sense of the pattern that you should impose on the given work. I always get the feeling that I am raking up the earth rather than laying down the concrete. Simon McBurney i-am feeling you work We feel closer to the drawings on the walls of Chauvet than the painting of, say, an Egyptian mural. These artists are not remote ancestors; they are brothers. They saw like us; they drew like us. We wear essentially the same clothes against the cold. Simon McBurney feel painting cold clothes For years, I wasn't in the least bit interested in opera. Simon McBurney least interested opera years My proposition is that music is at the heart of what 'The Magic Flute' means: that it's Mozart's music, not the words, we should be attending to. Music expresses what can't be expressed otherwise. Simon McBurney words magic music heart Mozart's seeming frothiness is just a light touch with very profound material. That's what I've found working on 'The Magic Flute.' Simon McBurney touch just magic light I might be like a conductor, or I collect the stuff together and I do a lot of my own writing. But what is a pleasure is the whole creative thing in which we're all excavating and trying to find something. Simon McBurney my-own creative together writing I'm passionate about music, and I feel that theatre has an extraordinarily musical ability in the way it operates on the audience. Simon McBurney feel theatre music way When I was doing 'A Disappearing Number' in Plymouth, we had to go on an hour and a half late, and I still hadn't written an end, so we had to make one up, and then we had to go out literally with our pants round our ankles. Simon McBurney end doing go late I feel that if you can play on the streets or in a comedy club, then in a theatre it's a doddle because you've got an audience. Simon McBurney feel you comedy theatre Our lives are a sequence of things. When we're alive, they're continuing, just as my words now are an improvisation. So the idea of 30 years is actually quite nebulous. It's impossible to encapsulate it. All you can do is go: 'what next?' Simon McBurney words you alive impossible If you're an actor, go out and act. Simon McBurney act actor go you
