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Welcome to This Cultural Life, the

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series in which leading creative figures reveal

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their most significant influences and experiences that

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have inspired their own work. I'm

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John Wilson, and my guest in this episode

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is the director and actor Simon McBurney, one

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of the founders of the groundbreaking theatre

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company Complicite. For over

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four decades McBurney has created innovative

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and experimental works, from

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immersive stagings to the reinvention of

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classic texts. His works

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include A Disappearing Number, The Encounter

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and Mnemonic, a landmark production which

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has recently been revived at the

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National Theatre. Simon

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McBurney, welcome to This Cultural Life. Thank you so much for

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having me. You were

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born in Cambridge in 1957. Take us back

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to home life. What was family life like? Well,

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it was a huge,

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gloomy Victorian semi-detached house,

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and there was a huge garden and

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curious people coming in and out, because

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my father was a professor of archaeology

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at Cambridge. But the

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house itself is the thing, when

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you say that, that

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I can remember so vividly. All

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the smells come back, and my father's

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study, which was completely

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chaotic with stuff everywhere, and

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on the wall a huge

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section of a trench with earth

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on it of different sections. And I remember

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him saying to me, it gets

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older as you go down, time is

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vertical. It was full

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of books everywhere, extremely

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cold, no sense of central heating,

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except once a year at Christmas,

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open fires, gas fires. My golly,

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it sounds incredibly primitive

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and a bakelite, two bakelite

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phones, one at the

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bottom of the stairs and one at the top. And

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you've already made a direct link between a memory and

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a work in later, which I want to talk about

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later, the vertical line, which is a piece that you

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made in, I think, 1999. Yes.

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Which was about time. Yes. And

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it being vertical rather than horizontal, how

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we would normally think. Did he encourage

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you to think like that and to

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explore archaeology as a kid? Well, my

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father was extremely absent-minded. And

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when he forgot things, which he

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did frequently, my mother

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would say, Odellis, thinking about his

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flints with great

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sort of approbation. My mother

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was incredibly present, incredibly

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creative. She had

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been secretary to Rebecca West

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and typed Black Lamb and Grey

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Falcon and the fountain overflows. And

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in fact, Rebecca West was

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kind of like a surrogate grandmother to

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us because we didn't have any grandparents.

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But my mother would write little plays for

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us, would do pantomimes every year. She would

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adapt the music from the sound of music

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and then play it on the piano while

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we had a little curtain and then we

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would perform. So as early as

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I can remember, we were all playing

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and performing. Had she worked in the theatre

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or was this just- She wanted to work in

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the theatre. She had been sent away on what

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they called in the 30s finishing school

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for middle class girls.

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And she'd gone to Paris and she had

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classes with a

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d'Oyenne of the Comédie Française whose name

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was Denis Dinesse. And he said at

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the end of the year that they

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were working together, Mademoiselle, vous pouvoir in

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carryére dans Comédie. You

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can have a career in comedy. So she

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went back home and she said to her parents

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around the brown table.