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Théâter de Londres: il a été reçu dans des salles prestigieuses, y compris celles du West End. »Notre troupe veut investir le centre-ville. C’est un choix politique. Nous voulons montrer que notre théâtre peut y vivre. Mais il faut être >balèze< comme vous le dites en français.« Balèze, le Théâtre de complicité? Sans l’ombre d’un doûte. ■ Le Monde, 14. IV 1995. Olivier Schmitt

THE THREE LIVES OF LUCIE CABROL Lucie Cabrol is a wild, tiny woman born into a peasant family in France in 1900. Abandoned by her lover, Jean, and banished by her family, she becomes an outcast. In this, her second life, she survives by smuggling goods across the border and by scavenging in the mountains. But it is not until her third life, her afterlife, that she discovers the survival of something more than bare human existence the survival of hope and love. B

THE THREE LIVES OF LUCIE CABROL, adapted from John Berger’s short story, was first performed at the Manchester Dancehouse in January 1994. It subsequently toured throughout Britain before a sell-out run at the Riversed Studios, London. In 1995 it was revived for a West End season at the Shaftesbury Theatre, London, and a further British and international tour. In Simon Mcßurney’s exhilarating produciton the story becomes an unsentimental evocation of peasant life, a hymn to the tenacity of love and a Brechtian fable about the world’s unfairness... Complicite’s brilliant technique is used to express Berger’s ideas... Complicité have matured into greatness. ■ Guardian, Michael Billington

SIMON McBURNEY is an actor, writer and Artistic Director oí Theatre de Complicité. He studied at Cambridge and trained at the Jacques Lecoq School, Paris. His theatre work includes: opening night of the Comedy Store (London); Notes of a Dirty Old Man (Edinburgh Fringe First Award); Strapontin

(Compagnie Jerome Deschamps Paris, London and Avignon); Eurydice (Chichester). For Complicité: Put It On Your Head, A Minute Too Late, More Bigger Snacks Now, Food Stuff, Please Please Please, Alice In Wonderland, Anything For A Quiet Life; The Visit (Almeida / Riverside / Royal National Theatre); My Army Part One and Two, The Winter’s Tale; The Street of Crocodiles (Olivier Award nomination for Best Director; Royal National Theatre and West End); The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol and Out of a House Walked a Man... (coproduction with the Royal National Theatre), He has also directed and taught for many other companies, leading chorus work and »Theatre Beyond Words« projects at the Royal National Theatre Studio. TV includes: Burning Ambition (writer/actor); Anything For A Quiet Life (adapter and codirector); Stolen, Gregory, Diary of a Nutcase, The Crying Game (Comic Strip); The Vicar of Dibley. Film includes: Tom and Viv, Being Human, Mesmer, Business Affair, Kafka, The Vacuum. ■

MARK WHEATLEY has been Literary Advisor to Theatre de Complicité since 1992. He has worked on Help! I’m Alive and The Visit, and co-adapted The Street of Crocodiles (Olivier Award nomination for Best Play), The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol and Out of a House Walked a Man... (co-production with Royal National Theatre). ■

JOHN BERGER, born in London in 1926, is a novelist, playwright, documentary writer and art critic. His novels include Pig Earth, Once in Europe and Lilac and Flag. He won the Booker Prize for his novel G. in 1972. His books with the photographer Jean Mohr include A Fortunate Man, A Seventh Man and Another Way of Telling. He has written several books on art, including Ways of Seeing and Success and Failure of Picasso. He lives in a village in the French Alps. ■