Theatre de Complicite’s Mnemonic: a Post-Modern Smorgasbord « The Phoenix Falls
May 12, 2008
The productions of the Theatre de Complicite are “often extremely physical, always highly visual, and frequently employing deceptively sophisticated uses of technology alongside centuries-old performance techniques, [and] cannot easily be reduced to the page” (Hunter 56). Complicite’s incredible techniques are best showcased in Mnemonic (1999), a technological and theatrical experience written as a frayed, yet beautifully pieced-together play about memory and the unique act of remembering. The more recent productions of Complicite use technology to their advantage; “Mnemonic, in particular is a multimedia event, using a complex recorded sound design, automated lighting, video and projected images seamlessly interwoven with the company’s trademark style of physical theatre and imaginative staging” (Hunter 57). Mnemonic, with its luscious combination of multimedia, movement, story, imagery, and emotional metaphors, is the golden exemplar of Complicite’s work. It is a key piece to study for its technological advances in the theatre space, for its post-modern style, and for the manner in which the piece was created.
Mnenomic
Mnemonic has 38 short interweaving scenes, reads like a screenplay, and runs without an intermission. In the broadest of terms, this play is about memory and origins: Who are we? Where do we come from? What do we remember, and how do we remember? Multiple times throughout the show, Alice (the love interest who plays opposite of Virgil, the play’s protagonist) repeats the line, “What does nakedness remind us of?” Ultimately, the show begs to remind us of our natural state, to remember all those before us. It reminds us to realize our primal connection to all humans, past and present.
Mnemonic “explores the fragmented nature of memory, especially as it relates to identity; meditates about origins, especially in the context of European history; and investigates the chaotic structures of emotional need” (Hunter 64). The fragmented nature of memory is expressed through Mnemonic’s written structure, and its use of simple yet transformative set pieces, props, distinctive lighting, and chaotic sound effects. The theme of origin is expressed consistently throughout the play. During the opening monologue, Simon (the director who transforms into the Virgil character) asks the audience to wear a blindfold and trace the veins of a leaf while imagining “that each vein is a line of your ancestry all coming down to you, the stalk. All of them leading to you” (7). The end image of the show expresses our origins through the use of the Iceman metaphor. The stage directions read: “Then one by one the members of the cast follow each other in lying in the place of the Iceman. They lay themselves down and roll off again just as generation succeeds generation in a never ending cycle” (72). Virgil and Alice recite the lines, “All of them indescribable, all of them familiar, all of them constituting a home” (72). Our origins and history are “indescribable,” yet they “constitute a home” for each one of us.
In regards to the expression of origin in relation to European identity, Alice’s journey to unknown towns and cities throughout Europe in search of her father serves to explore her own question of origin. Alice struggles in finding her place in the world without knowing the truth of her father’s life. In an attempt to find answers to her questions, she leaves her boyfriend Virgil, and armed with a box of her father’s possessions embarks on her European journey. This journey parallels the journey of the Iceman: where the scientists and journalists are attempting to put together the pieces of the Iceman’s life by studying the artifacts he left behind, so is Alice with her father. In the end, the scientists will not know the concrete truth of the Iceman’s life. This parallels Alice’s attempt to find the truths of her father, and her questions are not explicitly answered in the show. In both cases of the iceman and Alice’s father, all that is left behind to represent them are their material items. The importance of these two storylines is in the journey. In her essay, “Performing Europe: Identity Formation for a ‘New’ Europe,” Janelle Reinelt explains that “both lines of development are quest narratives: one, personal but contextualized as typical of humans hunting for their connections to their pasts; the other, public and scientific but gradually revealed as a metaphor” (376).
The iceman serves as a metaphor for human interconnectedness and empathy. In the London program, John Berger writes of the iceman:
All bodies have so much in common, more than we habitually remember until we see one naked, or until we deliberately touch one another. The similitude, however, is not the conclusion but the starting point. It is where empathy beings. It is how one can put oneself in somebody else’s place. In the gully, for example, five thousand years ago. (Berger qtd. in Reinelt 376)
This metaphor is shown to the audience by the character’s multiplicity: the iceman is played by Virgil, a chair, a chair-puppet, and at the conclusion of the play, every cast member. The iceman is the “everyman.” He embodies our ancestors of 5,000 years past, and his discovery reminds us of our innate nakedness. Transformation is important in this play; it is presented in the transformative character of the chair, in the multiple embodiments of the iceman, and in the many character transformations of the actors. Reinelt explains the role of transformation within the play: “Space and place dissolve and reform instantaneously. The various ‘stories’ are played through and across the spaces of other stories. The transformation of objects and bodies is central to the idea that we humans carry pasts concretely within our container-selves, in our brains, our postures, our nakedness” (375). The iceman itself transforms from an anthropologic artifact to a piece of property that holds power in its rarity and commercial value. The more the scientists learn about the iceman, the more alive it becomes; the iceman transforms again, from a found object into a living connection to our past.
History of the Company
Complicite, whose name “is derived from the French word for partnership,” (Raymond) began in 1983 by a small group of actors influenced by the French mime artists, Jacques Lecog and Phillippe Gaulier. They decided to use their training in theatrical movement and to start a traveling “physical theatre” performance group. By focusing on mime and clowning, the actors told their stories through text-less, movement-based performances. This was the beginning of what would become one of the most experimental devised theatres groups in the UK. Simon McBurney, Annabel Arden, and Marcello Magni are the founding members of the group, McBurney now currently serving as artistic director of the theatre. In its 25 years of existence, Complicite has devised over 26 productions, traveled to 41 countries, and has won more than 25 international awards. Complicite’s first production Put It On Your Head (1983), combined the genres of silent film and circus to tell a comic and physical story of characters on the English seaside. Other early productions include an expressionist version of Help! I’m Alive (1990), and a tumbling version of William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.
Complicite is unique in the fact that all of its productions are created and devised by the company. The company’s website emphases that, “There is no Complicite method. What is essential is collaboration” (Complicite). Nine years after its creation, Complicite introduced text into its routines and shifted to “disruptive theatre.” That is, they began “seeking what is most alive, integrating text, music, image and action” to create a unique theatrical experience (Complicite). The first text-based play they created was The Street of Crocodiles (1992), which was inspired by the life of the Polish author, Bruno Schulz (Complicite’s Tricks). The company devises and performs three different types of shows: reinterpretations of classic works (Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle), adaptations of literary works (The Elephant Vanishes based on the short stories of Haruki Murakami), and company-devised productions (Mnemonic).
As Complicite has matured, so has its complexity of productions and performance techniques. Combining new-age technology with their traditional mime and clown training, they have created an incredibly unique artistic hodgepodge of visually compelling performance style. Productions like Mnemonic showcase the company’s ability to create post-modern visual masterpieces. Elyse Sommer of “Curtain Up” wrote in her review that Mnemonic is “a visual feast of movement, light and sound.” She continues:
No less remarkable than the performances is the dazzling stagecraft: Michael Levine’s set design evokes every shift in the play’s ever changing landscape. Paul Anderson’s lighting is nothing short of brilliant, especially when he accompanies a telephone conversation between Virgil and Alice with her image projected into his bare chest. Christopher Shutt’s sound effects further enhance the overall originality and effectiveness (Sommer).
What makes Complicite extraordinary is their ability to balance between text, live performance, sound design, and visuals (such as the set and lighting). Their use of all these elements, in combination with their unique movement-based performance style makes them a prime example of successful post-modern theatre. McBurney writes of this in Mnemonic’s program note: “We live in a time where stories surround us. Multiple stories. Constantly. Fragmented by television, radio, print, the internet […]. We no longer live in a world of the single tale. So the shards of stories we have put together, some longer some shorter, collide here in the theatre, reflecting, repeating, and evolving like the act of memory itself” (Sommer). The only way for Mnemonic’s interweaving stories to be told was through its multiple avenues. Complicite is the voice of the new post-modern and technology-driven era. We live our lives in multiplicity and fragments, and Complicity has taken that and put it on stage to examine.
Complicite’s success with Mnemonic produced many awards and much acclaim. Lyn Gardner of “The Guardian” writes in her review: “I think about the world differently now than when I entered the theatre, and I know that I shall remember Mnemonic all my life” (Gardner). In the British Theatre Guide, Jackie Fletcher writes, “Theatre de Complicite is, to my mind, one of the most dynamic and imaginative companies working out of Britain” (Fletcher). Mnemonic has won over 10 awards including The Critic Circle’s Award for Best New Play (1999), and the Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience (2001).
A Devised Work
Mnemonic is credited as being conceived by Simon McBurney, and devised by the Complicite company. Devising “is a process of making theatre that enables a group of performers to be physically and practically creative in the sharing and shaping of an original product that directly emanates from assembling, editing, and re-shaping individuals’ contradictory experiences of the world” (Oddey 1). This model lends itself to the types of creations Complicite strives to create. McBurney wanted to create a show about topics he found interesting and relevant to his time: community, continuity, and its connection to memory. He pitched the idea to his crew and they began their process of devising the play. McBurney explains the process they embarked: “At the source, we merely investigated our own memories and how they functioned. [...] The root of the piece in this instance was our own experience. It was about what we remember, about where we came from. That was our text” (Complicite). However, this idea of memory is not the only thread that made it into the multi-layer show. Accompanying the initial theme of memory is the discovery of the iceman, and Alice’s expansive travels across post-WWII Europe in search of her father. McBurney explains, “Without knowing exactly how we would do it we began to connect these and many other texts together until the piece emerged” (Complicite). This creative, messy, and collaborative project turned into Mnemonic, a post-modern masterpiece of multiple storylines, minimal staging, and complex technological stage effects.
The process of “devising” or “collaborative creation” is not a new artistic practice, but Complicite is unique in the fact that it devises exclusively. Even when performing classic pre-written texts, the company adds a fresh spin to it. This is a normal practice in devising; “many companies see no contradiction between working on pre-existing scripts and devising work, and move seamlessly between the two” (Heddon 6). In Devising Performance: A Critical History, Heddon and Milling describe the process of devising as: “ a social expression of non-hierarchical possibilities; [...] an ensemble; a collective; [...] a de-commodification of art; [...] an expressive, creative language; innovative; risky; inventive; spontaneous; experimental; non-literary” (4-5). This process involves the minds of many, and thus it produces works that are diverse and rich, productions which “blur boundaries between style and forms, re-integrates dance, music and theatre, explores fluidity and multiplicity in languages and questions national and cultural borders” (Gardano qtd. in Reinelt). It would be simply impossible for one singular playwright to integrate so many layers into a production; the collaborative process of devising is at the heart of every Complicite production.
“There is a curious and very different sensation when you apparently have something in your hands—a play—and when you have nothing but fragments, scraps, and imaginings when you are devising,” McBurney has said about his experience with devising. “Yet strangely I feel I start from the same place: until I start to feel and experience something, there is nothing” (“Simon McBurney” 67). McBurney and the Complicite company has been producing a very different type of theatre for 25 years now, and it has made an impact. Mnemonic, with its deep thematic issues of memory and origins, affects every person who experiences it in a profoundly special way. Complicite is leading the theatre world into the beautiful theatrical landscape of the 21st century: that of multiplicity of theatrical techniques, a subdued approach to text, a heightened awareness to movement and visuals, and the exploration of vital topics that our culture must examine in the post-modern era.
