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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
Associate Set Designer
William Fricker
Design Assistant
Ruth Hall
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
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Nottingham Playhouse
4 - 8 April
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Belgrade Theatre, Coventry
19 - 22 April
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The Lowry, Salford
25 - 29 April
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Ruhrfestspiele, Recklinghausen
3 - 6 May
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Grand Theatre, Luxembourg
11 - 12 May
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10th Theatre Olympics, Budapest
16 - 17 May
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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
- Figures in Extinction [1.0]
- The Dark is Rising
- Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
- Can I Live? filmed performance
- The Last of the Pelican Daughters
- I'll Take You to Mrs Cole!
- everything that rises must dance
- Grief is the Thing with Feathers
- The Rake's Progress
- A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer
- Beware of Pity
- The Encounter
- Lionboy
- The Master and Margarita
- The Magic Flute
- A Dog's Heart
- Endgame
- Shun-kin
- A Disappearing Number
- Vanishing Points
- Strange Poetry
- Measure for Measure
- Pet Shop Boys Meet Eisenstein
- The Elephant Vanishes
- Light
- The Noise of Time
- The Vertical Line
- Mnemonic
- The Caucasian Chalk Circle
- To The Wedding
- The Chairs
- Foe
- Out of a house walked a man...
- The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol
- The Winter's Tale
- The Street of Crocodiles
- Help! I'm Alive
- My Army Parts I and II
- The Visit
- Ave Maria
- The Phantom Violin
- Burning Ambition
- Anything For A Quiet Life
- Please, Please, Please
- Food Stuff
- More Bigger Snacks Now
- A Minute Too Late
- Put It On Your Head