A group of actors embrace in a circle before a show. The actor whose back is facing the camera wears a black Complicite T-shirt with a white chair on it.

About us

‘…the most influential and consistently interesting theatre company working in Britain’
– The Times

Complicité is an international touring theatre company based in London led by Artistic Director and co-founder Simon McBurney. Complicité creates work that strengthens human interconnection, using the complicity between performer and audience that is at the heart of the theatrical experience. Complicité works across art forms, believing theatre, opera, film, radio, installation, publication and participatory arts can all be sites for the collective act of imagination.

Complicité’s recent work includes Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Figures in Extinction [1.0], Can I Live?, The Encounter, The Master and Margarita, Shun-kin and A Disappearing Number, as well as The Dark is Rising, a new audio drama for BBC World Service and BBC Sounds based on Susan Cooper’s cult novel. Founded in 1983, the Company has won over 50 major theatre awards worldwide, and played in more than 40 countries.

Complicité began life as a collective and this spirit of collective enquiry and collaborative curiosity has driven the work throughout its history. The Company is famous for making its work through extensive periods of research and development which brings together performers, designers, writers, artists and specialists from diverse fields to create the works – a process now known simply as ‘devising’.

Alongside Simon McBurney’s work, the Company supports artists through the ‘Mudlarks’ strand. The Company is committed to widening access and pro-actively seeks to support talented artists who are under-represented in the theatre sector. Learning and engagement are central to its work and its award-winning Creative Engagement programme includes professional development, work in schools and colleges and participatory projects with a range of communities.

The Company is committed to responding to the climate and ecological emergency. It is a founder member of Culture Declares Emergency and co-chairs a working group of UK Touring Theatre Companies to share best sustainable practice and to develop the Theatre Green Book Touring Guidance. You can read more about this on our Climate Crisis page.

2024 marks the company’s 41st year.