Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Seven years after the unforgettable "The Encounter", Simon McBurney and Complicité return to Onassis Stegi, with a play that glorifies physical theater and polyphonic storytelling as performed by a ten-member ensemble of veteran actors of the genre. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead involves an elderly pensioner in an isolated mountainous village in Poland who claims that the killings of her hunting neighbors are committed by the animals themselves, like an act of transcendental revenge on the part of nature.

The story of Tokarczuk begins in the depths of winter in a small community on a remote Polish mountainside. Men from the local hunting club are dying in mysterious circumstances and Janina Duszejko—an eccentric older local woman, environmentalist, amateur astronomer, and enthusiastic translator of William Blake—has her suspicions. She has been watching the animals with whom the community shares their isolated, rural home, and she believes they are acting strangely…

Engaged in fierce resistance against the injustices around her, Janina refuses to be a prisoner of society and gender. Her actions ask questions both of the male world which surrounds her and of our deeper human intentions: what does it mean to be human and what does it mean to be animal, and can we separate the two? Why is the killing of animals a sport and that of humans a murder?

This darkly comic, anarchic noir caused a seismic reaction in Tokarczuk’s native Poland due to its defiant attack on authoritarian structures, with right-wing press branding the writer an “eco-terrorist” and a national traitor.

"Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead" is a thought-provoking, wry, and otherworldly murder mystery tale about the cosmos, poetry, and the limitations and possibilities of activism.

• Openly against Poland’s current nationalistic government, as well as a self-declared atheist, leftist, and feminist, Olga Tokarczuk has long been targeted by her country’s establishment. Polish right-affiliated press called her an “eco-terrorist” and a “national traitor” on the grounds of “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.” In 2022, she co-signed, along with her multi-awarded peers Orhan Pamuk, Svetlana Alexievich, and Margaret Atwood, an open protest letter against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while three years before, she participated in a similar written protest addressed to the European Commission for the violation of human rights at the Polish borders.
• The discussion within Complicité regarding the theatrical adaptation of Tokarczuk’s book begins in the summer of 2020, amid the pandemic. Almost six months later, in January 2021, McBurney launches a first two-week research workshop with the actors. Rehearsals officially begin in October 2022 and the premiere is scheduled two months later. For the first time in the history of the company, a Polish actor appears in the cast, in an effort to “instill” the rhythm and textures of the Polish language into the rehearsals and highlight the role of hunting in Polish culture.
• The core elements in the book’s adaptation, as emerged during research, are animal corporeality in correlation with the original music score, the co-enunciation groups created within the 11-member crew in the form of a Chorus, and devised theater, drawing on the concepts of dreaming and recollections. Moreover, the use of everyday objects by each actor-character during rehearsals played a crucial role, since, as Simon McBurney notes, “whatever the idea is, you must bring it to the table.” Research trips to Poland proved decisive for the overall aesthetics of the performance, while, following the guidelines of ‘Theatre Green Book’ initiative—the Bible for a sustainable theater—75% of the objects used in the production are secondhand, with 80% of the total of materials planned to be reused or recycled.
• Six years have passed since Simon McBurney last assumed directorial duties for Complicité. In 2007, he chose Igor Stravinsky’s opera “The Rake’s Progress,” which tells the story of a series of artworks by British visual artist William Hogarth. The opera toured European festivals for three years.
• Complicité made their debut in 1983, with founding members Simon McBurney, Annabel Arden, and Marcello Magni—husband of actress Katherine Hunter—who died last September. Disciples of Jacques Lecoq and driven by the philosophy of a collective, they delved into long periods of experimentation to emerge as the matrix of devised theater. In their forty-year career, they have worked on classic playwrights and literary works, becoming known for their freedom in approaching their stories and imparting them to the audience in multiple ways. Peter Brook has stated: “The English theater has a fine and honorable tradition. Simon McBurney and Complicité are not part of this; they have created their tradition, and this is why they are so special, so valuable.” The group has toured more than 40 countries, gaining more than fifty international awards and distinctions.