Complicite - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Based on the novel by

Olga Tokarczuk

Directed by

Simon McBurney

Set and Costume Design

Rae Smith

Lighting Design

Paule Constable

Sound Design

Christopher Shutt

Video Design

Dick Straker

Additional Direction

Kirsty Housley

Dramaturgy by

Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre and Laurence Cook

Movement Direction

Toby Sedgwick

Original Compositions

Richard Skelton

Assistant Director

Gemma Brockis

Associate Costume Designer

Johanna Coe

Wigs Designer

Susanna Peretz

Original Novel Translated by

Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Casting by

Amy Ball CDG

Artwork by

Patryk Hardziej

Cast

Thomas Arnold, Johannes Flaschberger, Tamzin Griffin, Amanda Hadingue, Kathryn Hunter, Kiren Kebaili-Dwyer, Weronika Maria, Tim McMullan, César Sarachu, Sophie Steer, Alexander Uzoka

‘I see the Earth in eclipse. I see us moving about blindly in eternal Gloom, like May bugs trapped in a box by a cruel child. It’s easy to harm and injure us, to smash up our intricately assembled, bizarre existence… I see nothing but Catastrophes. But as the Fall is the beginning, can we possibly fall even lower?’ - Janina Duszejko, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

TICKETS ARE NOW ON SALE – scroll down for performance dates and links to book

Based on Nobel Prize winning author Olga Tokarczuk’s novel of the same name, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a new work for theatre conceived and directed by Simon McBurney. Tokarczuk’s controversial, violent, genre defying novel – part thriller, part comedy, and part blistering poetic manifesto for the rights of animals and the environment – caused an uproar in its native Poland upon publication.

In the depths of winter in a small community on a remote Polish mountainside near the Czech-Polish border, men from the local hunting club are dying in mysterious circumstances and Janina Duszejko – an eccentric older local woman, ex-engineer, environmentalist, devoted astrologer and enthusiastic translator of William Blake – has her suspicions. She has been watching the animals with whom the community share their isolated, rural home, and she believes they are acting strangely…

A Complicité co-production with Barbican London, Belgrade Theatre Coventry, Bristol Old Vic, Comédie de Genève, Holland Festival, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, L'Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, The Lowry, The National Theatre of Iceland, Oxford Playhouse, Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen and Theatre Royal Plymouth.

A Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead resource pack for schools, containing rehearsal notes, interviews and creative tasks to support students studying devising is available to download here.

Complicité thanks the Mirisch & Lebenheim Charitable Foundation for their generous support of this production.

Complicité is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. Complicité thanks the Polish Cultural Institute in London, the Maria Björnson Memorial Fund and Backstage Trust for their additional funding support.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is published in Great Britain by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Image credits: Artwork © Patryk Hardziej, Olga Tokarczuk © Łukasz Giza

Tour

2022

Theatre Royal Plymouth
1-3 December
Tickets on sale here

2023

Bristol Old Vic
19 January - 11 February
Tickets on sale here

Oxford Playhouse
1 - 4 March
Tickets on sale here

Barbican, London
16 March - 1 April
Tickets on sale here

Nottingham Playhouse
4 - 8 April
Tickets on sale here

Belgrade Theatre, Coventry
19 - 22 April
Tickets on sale here

The Lowry, Salford
25 - 29 April
Tickets on sale here

Ruhrfestspiele, Recklinghausen
3 - 6 May
Tickets on sale here

Grand Theatre, Luxembourg
11 - 12 May
Tickets on sale here

10th Theatre Olympics, Budapest
16 - 17 May
Tickets on sale here

Wiener Festwochen, Vienna
22 - 26 May
Tickets on sale here

Holland Festival, Amsterdam
1 - 3 June 2023
Tickets on sale here

L'Odeon, Paris
7 - 17 June
Tickets on sale here

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2022

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Tour

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Postage and T&Cs

Cookie Policy

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Privacy Policy

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