On the London stage, Simon McBurney is a name to be reckoned with. He’s the founder and artistic director of Complicite, one of the city’s most innovative and inventive theatre companies. He’s also acted on television and in movies and has been hailed as one of the “dozen or so most important theatre directors working anywhere in the world”.

This month the action onstage has shifted to India. McBurney is staging several performances of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure in Mumbai and Bangalore. What’s more, some actors and local hands from India will be travelling to Britain next year to work with McBurney and Complicite. He has always travelled to different corners of the world with his productions and believes in a two-way exchange. “Touring is a part of the process, theatre by its nature is something which moves,” says McBurney. In fact, he believes that performances change drastically after a tour and expects to create a different Measure for Measure on his return to England.

McBurney is still struggling with the logistics of performing in India. His troupe first made their appearance at the larger Jamshed Bhabha Theatre and then at the smaller Prithvi Theatre. This week it will be travelling to Bangalore. The result has been a series of complicated logistics problems as the cast and set hands adjust to the new, sometimes smaller, venues. “It will be interesting for the actors to work in different venues,” says McBurney, who has been acclaimed by Peter Brook for creating his “own tradition”.

On his Indian tour, in fact, McBurney will be conducting a technical workshop and a two-day actors’ workshop to explore a project based on the life of the mathematician, Ramanujan. The interest in Ramanujan stems from a conversation with the Sri Lankan writer Michael Ondaatje who is a friend. “He spoke to me about the book A Mathematician's Apology, and I got very excited. Let’s see if it works.”

Complicite’s Measure for Measure has already been widely acclaimed. McBurney has interpreted it in a modern context ? his Angelo, the second-in-command to whom Duke Vincentio hands over power, is a neo-conservative, and the image of George Bush flashing during one scene created controversy. McBurney has gone beyond the exploration of justice and mercy and the effects of political power. He believes that the issue underpinning all these is “sex and how we react to sex, morally, emotionally, impulsively”.

As a company, Complicite has explored different media such as radio and collaborated with artists and theatre people from across the world. And technology is as much a part of McBurney’s productions as the script or cast itself. So Measure for Measure is a stunning technological production with screens and televised close-ups of the action on stage and great sound and light effects that evoke the mood and even create a sub-text.

“I’ve always been fascinated by technology,” says McBurney. So in Complicite’s second production itself, he introduced a television on stage. “OK it didn’t work but we were already playing around with it,” he says. And adds, “I think it is vital for all actors to experiment with technology so that it becomes another tool. If you can use it well, it’s just another element of theatre and it’s fascinating how it can help unveil the magic of a scene.”

For McBurney, the collaboration between the actors on stage and between the actors and the audience is the essence of Complicite. So the company seeks to create what it calls ‘mischievous, deviant, disruptive theatre’. Says McBurney, “I didn’t think it was disruptive theatre, all I knew when I began was that I wanted to make the kind of theatre that I didn’t see around.”

He quickly realised that the arrival of film and television had changed the entertainment game entirely. Theatre suddenly became the preserve of the intellectual middle class and upper class and therefore removed from its popular roots.

Certainly, with Complicite, which he co-founded in 1983, McBurney has tried to seize and even create opportunities, producing a broad body of work from entirely new pieces to adaptations and revivals of classic texts. There have even been collaborations such as one with writer John Berger on a radio adaptation of his novel, To The Wedding, and with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra to create Strange Poetry based on composer Berlioz’s Symphonie Fanstastique. In 2003, he even directed The Elephant Vanishes, inspired by a collection of short stories by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.

McBurney’s has also been deeply influenced by his training at the Jacques Lecoq’s School of Mime and Theatre in Paris with its emphasis on the dynamics of movement. Says McBurney, “Lecoq understood that all theatre emanates from the body but the muscle he was most interested in was the muscle of the imagination.” So while the text may be critical, for McBurney what you do on stage is equally important as what you say ? or don’t say. In fact, Complicite has often been described as a company that is fascinated by action and image.

Also, Complicite has always challenged the establishment. Take rehearsals, for instance. “I think the British find rehearsals embarrassing. They think it’s something that should be done in private like going to the toilet,” says McBurney. In contrast, he makes sure that “we get over those moments of embarrassment and find different ways to open up the act.” So Complicite’s rehearsal rooms are full of chaos and filled with what he calls “a kind of turbulent forward movement”.

McBurney believes that he’s an actor first and a director, second. For acting is something that he’s done since he was a child. He grew up in an academic background in Cambridge. His father was an archaeologist, and his mother, who wanted to be an actress, used to write plays. “I grew up in a dark Victorian house. There used to be two curtains at the end of a long corridor and we used to perform pantomimes every Christmas. I always acted in school plays. I don’t remember a single year of my life when I didn’t act in a play” he recalls.

In the late 70s and early 80s, there was an influx of international theatre in London and that “exposure to other possibilities” there and later in Paris influenced him.

“I’ve always been interested in things which can reach out to an audience. Let’s just say that I am as much interested in the lowbrow as I am in productions of Shakespeare and Ibsen,” he says.

So how does he choose a play? “How do you live your life?” he counters. He adds, “Theatre is the art of personal experience.” Nevertheless, he hasn’t confined himself to theatre and has acted in over 20 films such as Onegin and Eisenstein.

For now, he has several things on his plate. There are two films, a production of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame and three projects, including the one on Ramanujan. For McBurney every production is a collaborative adventure into the unknown.

Photographs by Gajanan Dudhalkar