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" In my opinion, there's nothing new in the theatre, ever. Theatre-makers are thieves, in the honourable tradition of charlatans. They fake it very, very well indeed for the entertainment of everybody else. "

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" Infinity is a way to describe the incomprehensible to the human mind. In a way, it notates a mystery. That kind of mystery exists in relationships. A lifetime is not enough to know someone else. It provides a brief glimpse. "

Simon McBurney

Mind

Mystery

Someone

" As a child, acting just seemed like a natural extension of my love of play - and if you've forgotten how to play, you shouldn't be an actor. "

" I try to push a single idea to its absolute limit. So for all of those ideas that existed in the story, you attempt to find a physical realisation in the space. "

" I feel that if you can play on the streets or in a comedy club, then in a theatre it's a doddle because you've got an audience. "

" I sometimes feel I would like to do crazy things with 'Endgame,' where someone says something, but the words, instead of being spoken, are written words projected out of their mouth. "

" When the brain gets lost, it doesn't stop working. It tries to makes sense of things. It begins to speculate and guess, and that's when things open up. That's exciting. "

" I don't have what German directors call 'a concept' - a solid, fixed sense of the pattern that you should impose on the given work. I always get the feeling that I am raking up the earth rather than laying down the concrete. "

" In 1600, Shakespeare's London was a city of 200,000 people. At the same time, there were already over a million in Tokyo. "

" Living in France while the Falklands War was going on, I felt a profound sense of shame and betrayal, just as I did by the war in Iraq. People have asked why I don't talk about that directly in my plays. Well, politics needs to be articulated in many different ways. "

" My parents loved classical music. And my father adored Mozart. But for some reason, I always had a reaction against it. "

" I was keen to stage 'Faust,' although I find Goethe's 'Faust' indigestible. "

" I'm naturally attracted to something I don't understand because when you try to deal with something you don't understand, it opens a door into another world. "

" The repeated action of working and playing acts like a trowel that uncovers a hidden structure under the earth. It is an action that deepens and develops. "

Simon McBurney

Structure

Hidden

" Mozart's seeming frothiness is just a light touch with very profound material. That's what I've found working on 'The Magic Flute.' "

" I remember the fact that milk was delivered every day by a milkman. In summer, my mother would make what now seem in my middle-aged imagination the most delicious iced milkshakes. "

" I don't recall making a conscious decision to become an actor. I just remember winning a prize at a theatre festival when I was 17 and saying: 'Oh, that's what I have to do.' "

" For me, acting is like a holiday. When you're directing, you have a strong sense of responsibility for others. It's exciting but exhausting, especially when you're like me: always wanting to break the rules. "

Simon McBurney

Responsibility

You

" I find all food irresistible. I have friends who live in the mountains in France. One of them sells vegetables, and to walk through her garden when everything is bursting out - it's impossible not to eat something. "

" I have always felt more at home in a culture that has nothing to do with the one I was born and brought up in. "

" I constantly want to know - what is a table, or what is a cat? "

" When I met Miller, for me it wasn't a question of wanting to meet him because it was Arthur Miller; it was a kind of astonishment that I could meet someone who was so deeply embedded in the psyche of my artistic development. "

" I spent the majority of time at school trying to break the rules. I would climb to the top of buildings; I even burned a building down once - not intentionally, just because I was interested in fire. I remember going through the rule book, ticking off the ones I had broken and looking for the ones I hadn't. "

" Everyone sees something different in 'Endgame': a biblical apocalypse, a portrait of painful co-dependency, a confession of guilt and dignity in the face of death, a night of baffling hopelessness, a meaningless babble. Each interpretation reveals an absurd truth - not about the play, but about the person watching it. "

" I don't tend to get cast in the theatre much. People assume I come with all this baggage. But they do cast me in films. In films, I'm a nobody. "

Simon McBurney

Nobody

Theatre

" I allow people to create, but I'm also marshalling everybody, which is difficult for my creativity, as I'm like a referee. Everybody else is kicking a ball. It is very messy. From the mess, though, you refine what is there. "

" I've had various people close to me die, and I don't necessarily find the idea of death purely depressing. "

" I don't really think about a visual aspect to the work at all; I just think about making the piece. And everything that occurs visually comes out of the subject matter you are dealing with so that I find it difficult to treat the visual element as a separate entity. "

" When I was doing 'A Disappearing Number' in Plymouth, we had to go on an hour and a half late, and I still hadn't written an end, so we had to make one up, and then we had to go out literally with our pants round our ankles. "

Simon McBurney

Pants

Late

" The brain constantly assures us, reassures us, that we are in control. But the closer you look, the more questions you have about it. "

Simon McBurney

You

Questions

" Theatre is about the collective imagination... Everything I use on-stage is driven by the subject matter and what you might call the text - but that text can be anything, from a fragment of movement or music to something you see on a TV. "