Simon McBurney: 'Germany understand that in a crisis you need bonds between people'
As Complicite's The Encounter goes online, its creator discusses the need to rebuild British culture from the ground up'
When Simon McBurney started his company Complicite in 1983, he didn't think his brand of anarchic theatre would one day make its way on to syllabuses alongside Pinter and Shakespeare. We've never seen ourselves as an institution and all of a sudden we find ourselves on the GCSE and A-level curriculum," he says.
Now his work is also being streamed, something that was once anathema to a performer and director who has always emphasised the importance of a live setting. In a theatre, you give yourself up to it as an audience. You can't stop it, rewind it," says McBurney. If you go out to the toilet or to have a cigarette you miss something. It has its own time. That's something you can't get online."
If theatre is to survive it has to have very powerful regional bases
Related: A life in theatre: Simon McBurney
My feeling is that we are being led by a government that is lying to us, and has been engaged in misinformation for a long time
The Encounter is online from 15-22 May
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