Theatre / Bristol old vic
Bristol Old Vic to host world premiere of new Complicité production in 2023
Coinciding with Bristol Old Vic’s autumn season which has gone on general sale, the theatre has announced that its first show of 2023 will be a world premiere from the internationally renowned touring company, Complicité.
Conceived and directed by Simon McBurney, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is based on the novel from Nobel Prize-winning author, Olga Tokarczuk.
When it was first published, the thrilling, anarchic and darkly comic novel made waves in its native Poland, and Tokarczuk met with outraged claims of treachery and eco-terrorism from the right wing press.
is needed now More than ever
Olga Tokarczuk – photo: Łukasz Giza
The story follows Janina Duszejko, an eccentric 65 year-old local woman – and something of a polymath – pitting herself against societal injustice and patriarchal norms.
It’s an extraordinary literary achievement that for McBurney, “speaks to my deepest sense of the continuity between humankind and nature – a world where, like a mycelium web, all entities are connected deeply at the roots, unable to exist alone.
“Tokarczuk is a prophet for our times who understands us in all our hilarity, messiness, cruelty and animalism, and it is a great privilege to bring to the stage what is surely one of literature’s most urgent accounts of being alive today.”
Simon McBurney – photo: Jorri Kristjansson
Drive Your Plow involves a team of collaborators, many of whom have long-standing associations with Complicité. Set and costume comes from Rae Smith; lighting design from Paule Constable; sound from Christopher Shutt; video from Dick Straker and dramaturgy from Sian Ejiwumi-Le Berre and Laurence Cook.
The searing subject matter is a natural fit for the company. Not only does it resonate with the Complicité ethos, espousing the belief that theatre should challenge the limits of theatrical form, but it puts art front and centre as a mode of being and thinking that can, and should, encourage activism in its audience.
After its official opening in Bristol, the production will tour in the UK – including a three-week run at London’s Barbican – followed by international dates in Luxembourg, Amsterdam and Paris.
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Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is at Bristol Old Vic from January 19-February 11 2023. Booking opens on July 15; visit www.bristololdvic.org.uk for more information and ticket links.
Main photo: Stephen Gill
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