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The Street of Crocodiles

The Street of Crocodiles was inspired by the life and stories of Polish writer Bruno Schulz (1892-1942). It captures the vast landscapes of Schulz’s extraordinary imagination and the startling absurdity and sensuality of his work.

Quotes from Shultz’s writing:
'Somewhere in the dawn of childhood was The Book; the wind would rustle through its pages and the pictures would rise. Page after page floated in the air and gently saturated the landscape with brightness.'
The Book

'The untidy, feminine ripeness of August had expanded into enormous, impenetrable clumps of burdocks... with their luxuriant tongues of fleshy greenery ... a tangled thicket of grasses, weeds and thistles crackled in the fire of the afternoon. The sleeping garden was resonant with flies.'
August

Michael Billington - The Guardian, January 1999

'A second viewing sometimes brings disillusion. But this Theatre de Complicite production first seen at the Cottesloe in 1992 and since globally acclaimed, has gained enormously on its travels: it now has a lightness of texture that perfectly counterpoints the underlying gravity of the Bruno Schulz stories on which it is based. ...' More

Paul Taylor - The Independent, January 1999

'It's nearly seven years now since Theatre de Complicite's Street of Crocodiles began life in the Cottesloe and took the breath away with those stupendous opening images. Figures from the story's past hatch out of crates of books or emerge, splitting plumes of water, from tin baths. And, above all the rest, in more senses than one, a man walks down a brick wall at the back of the stage so that we seem to be getting an aerial view of a saunter along a moonlit street. "Is that abseiling or magic" asked my 11-year-old assistant, as we watched this wondrously inventive and moving revival at the Queen's Theatre. With both readily agreed that the more perceptive answer would be "magic". ...' More

Robert Butler - The Independent on Sunday, August 1992

'For a start, there is no script. I saw a list of ideas on a rehearsal room table, but no one else looked at it. The assistant director did offer the actors cream-coloured cards with neatly typed quotes but only on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Sort of, see what you think, let me know. ...' More

Simon McBurney - Director, The Street of Crocodiles

'The Street of Crocodileswas based on the short stories of Bruno Schulz. Our starting point here was simply to read to each other. Then we attempted to experience and re-create the stories in a myriad of forms and guises. Beginning by telling and retelling the stories. In abbreviated forms; or as fireside tales. As evocations of 'The World of Bruno' and visions without words at all, as dreams and nightmares. But in this rehearsal the objects began to dominate. They took over the room, filling pockets and the insides of the actors' hats, or under their tables. Umbrellas, book sprouting feathers, boots, shirts, plates, glasses and cutlery. In retrospect I realised that Schulz's vision, which evokes the transforming power of the child's eye, necessarily meant that objects and their transmogrification would be central to the process. But when we were in it, they seemed to take over the whole process without permission, beyond our control. I remember struggling with the attempt to bring the text to the fore with my co-adaptor Mark Wheatley. There were evenings of despair at the apparently unequal nature of the struggle. It was the material that pushed us there, the unruly unrepentant skew of Schulz's imagination which was both impetus and goal, and which we were, quite rightly, to be governed by.'

The piece began its life as a Complicite workshop at the National Theatre Studio in 1991. Opened August 1992 at the National Theatre’s Cottlesloe Theatre London. In 1992 and 1993 it toured to Sydney Festival, Gracie Fields Theatre Rochdale, Tramway Glasgow, Oxford Playhouse, Theatre Royal Winchester, Cambridge Arts Theatre, Dundee Repertory Theatre, Traverse Edinburgh, Theater Gessner Allee Zurich, LIFE Festival Vilnius, Tagenka Theatre Moscow, Theatr Polski Wroclaw, Israel Festival Jerusalem, Theater der Welt Munich, Grec Festival Barcelona. 1994 tour to National Theatre Bucharest, Muvesz Szinhaz Budapest, Festival Theatre en Mai Dijon, Carrefour International Quebec, Bonner Biennale Cologne, Reykjavik Arts Festival, Theatre du Merlan Marseille, Olympia Theatre Dublin Theatre Festival, Festival de Otono Madrid, Gardner Arts Centre Brighton. Also Young Vic London, and Whitehall Theatre London. 1998 revival tour to Lincoln Center Festival New York, Toronto Harbourfront Centre, Minneapolis Theatre de la Jeune Lune and Setagaya Public Theatre Tokyo. 1999 West End season at the Queens’ Theatre London and Stockholm Stadsteater