Simon McBurney/Complicite

Actor, writer, director, and co-founder of Complicite, Simon McBurney has created and acted in more than 30 productions for the company.

In 2012 he was the first British Artist Associé of the Avignon Festival, and his adaptation of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita was the festival's centrepiece.

In  2009, Shun-kin, created with the Japanese company of the Setagaya Theatre, Tokyo, earned him the Yomiuri Theatre Award Grand Prize for Best Director.

In 2008 he was awarded the Berlin Academy of Arts Konrad Wolf Prize for outstanding multi-disciplinary artists.

Other recent directing work includes A Dog’s Heart, an original opera, A Disappearing Number, winner of the Olivier Award for Best New Play, Measure for Measure, A Minute Too Late, The Elephant Vanishes, Pet Shop Boys Meet Eisenstein (Trafalgar Square) and Strange Poetry (with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in the Walt Disney Concert Hall). Other directing credits include All My Sons (with John Lithgow, Diane Wiest, Patrick Wilson and Katie Holmes on Broadway) and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (with Al Pacino in New York).

As an actor Simon appears in many feature films, including Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Jane Eyre, The Duchess and The Last King of Scotland. Film and television appearances include The Theory of Everything, Magic in the Moonlight and BBC TV’s Rev.