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Simon McBurney Biography

Simon Montagu McBurney, OBE (born 25 August 1957) is an English actor, writer and director. He is the founder and artistic director of the Théâtre de Complicité, London. He has had roles in the films The Manchurian Candidate, Friends with Money, The Golden Compass, The Duchess, Robin Hood, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Magic in the Moonlight, The Theory of Everything and Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.

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Simon McBurney Quotes

Ultimately, theatre takes place in the minds of the audience: they all imagine the same thing at the same time.

Imagine, Mind, Theatre, Time, Ultimately

I can't remember a single year of my life when I haven't made a piece of theatre.

Life, Pieces, Remember, Theatre, Year, Years

As far as I'm concerned all theatre is physical. As Aristotle says, you know, theatre is an act and an action, and he didn't mean just the writing of it, he meant that at the centre of any piece there is an action, a physical action.

Writing, Mean, Theatre, Action, Centre

I had a teacher in Paris, who said that if an actor forgot what it's like to play as a child he shouldn't be an actor. I've always loved being with children. It's marvellous to see the fresh ways they see the world. Watching them look at a tree or a river helps you to understand something that's very important.

Child, Children, Paris, Play, Teacher, Watching

Theatre artists are essentially sort of charlatans and thieves, I mean that's the tradition that we come from, so I have absolutely no, I make no bones about the fact that I steal from here and I take from there, and we all do it, that's perfectly all right, that's the nothing, there's nothing new in the world, there's nothing actually new in the way that you do something, but the point is is how do you take something and use it to articulate what is essentially a core of any given theatrical production.

Mean, Artist, Theatre, Core, Artists, World

The only reality of the theater exists in the mind of the audience. That audience looks collectively at what is going on on the stage and collectively imagines that this is real.

Audience, Collectively, Mind, Real, Theater, Theatre

I think it was a desire to be able to find my own voice. I think that was the big urge within me.

Big, Desire, Think, Thinking, Voice

One of the things he liked about playwriting as to any other kind of writing is that a playwright is a w-r-i-g-h-t, not a w-r-i-t-e; in other words, that a playwright is more of a craftsman than an artist of the big novel.

Artist, Liked, Playwriting, Theatre, Things, Writing

I sometimes feel that I am trying to dig in the world around me. I'm involved in another kind of archaeology to look for another kind of truth, and the moment I find, the moment I am separated from that life, the moment I am sort of in a world, every time I have gone out and performed in the, in the cinema for example, if you do two or three films on the trot you suddenly have this impression that you're becoming separate or separated from the world around you.

Films, Involved, Theatre, Trying, Two, World

Any fifth language that you use should be equally used as just another bit of theater language, so that if you have a strong text, then the light should be as strongly part of that text as, for example, the sound it should be or whatever it is that you see.

Equally, Example, Light, Strong, Theatre, Used

The only way that you can keep moving forward, finding other ways of expressing things about this increasingly complicated world that we live in, is by listening and observing not only to life around you but to the other people who are in the room. It's not about a sort of, you know, a sense that you have to be democratic about these things, it's a question of creativity that the process of making theatre is a collaborative process, and it is not in, it is not a question of, you know, I have no interest in paying lip service to it, for me it's absolutely fundamental.

Moving Forward, Creativity, Complicated World, Way, Paying

We try to place the human body in relation to the image all the time, so it's never a kind of a backdrop, but it's more of. . . a much more integrative experience.

Body, Experience, Image, Theatre, Time, Trying

I suppose as an actor you become very sensitive to rhythm, not just rhythm as you look at it sort of from the, from the outside as a director might see it, but within yourself you become used to the idea of hearing your fellow actors, responding to them in space.

Ideas, Rhythm, Sort, Space, Theatre

Normally when people ask me what I do I say I'm an actor, and that's what I always wanted to be and that's the way I approach work even when I'm directing it.

Actors, Ask, People, Theatre, Way, Work

We live in an age where quantity is seen as preferable to quality, and many people tend to work in a horizontal line: next, next, next. But if you do that, you never investigate the vertical line - the depth of the piece.

Inspirational, Work, People, Horizontal, Quality