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Tue 25 April - Sat 29 April

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

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Tue

25 Apr

7.30pm

From: £16.00

Wed

26 Apr

7.30pm

From: £16.00

  • Audio Described
  • Touch Tour

Thu

27 Apr

2pm

From: £16.00

Thu

27 Apr

7.30pm

From: £16.00

Fri

28 Apr

7.30pm

From: £18.00

Sat

29 Apr

2pm

From: £18.00

  • Captioned

Sat

29 Apr

7.30pm

From: £18.00

  • Captioned

(Polish)

Co-Commissioned by The Lowry

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

The world-renowned international touring company Complicité presents a new work for the theatre, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, directed by Simon McBurney.

Based on Nobel Prize winning author Olga Tokarczuk’s novel of the same name, the 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 national traitor.

The story 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, devoted 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 sport and that of humans murder?

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

“Olga Tokarczuk has created an extraordinary world that speaks to my deepest sense of the continuity between humankind and nature – a world where, like a mycelium web, all entities are connected deeply at the roots, unable to exist alone. Tokarczuk is a prophet for our times who understands us in all our hilarity, messiness, cruelty and animalism, and it is a great privilege to bring to the stage what is surely one of literature’s most urgent accounts of being alive today.” Complicité Artistic Director, Simon McBurney

“A new Complicite show isn’t just a devised play: it’s a theatrical event. At the company’s inimitable best, it is a ticket to another world.” Time Out

“one of the most fully-immersive theatre pieces ever created”

New York Times on Complicité’s award-winning production of The Encounter. 

Additional information

Runtime

Approx 3 hours

Warnings

This production includes haze, simulated smoking and drug use, flashing lights, blackouts, jumpscares, loud noises (including gunshots), swearing, some nudity, depictions of death, blood and violence, and the staged mistreatment of animals.

Age Guidance 12+

School Rate available | To book tickets for your class, please call 0342 208 1850 or email groups@thelowry.com

Accessible Performances

Audio Described | Wednesday 26 April 2023 at 7.30pm | Touch Tour at 6pm
Captioned | Saturday 29 April 2023 at 2pm
Captioned (Polish) | Saturday 29 April 2023 at 7.30pm

To book accessible performances, please email access@thelowry.com or call 0161 876 2183

Aby zakupić bilety na przedstawienia z polskimi napisami, prosimy o email na adres access@thelowry.com lub telefon pod numer 0161 876 2183

In order to purchase tickets for performances with polish captions, please email access@thelowry.com or call 0161 876 2183

A Complicité co-production with

Barbican London, Belgrade Theatre Coventry, Bristol Old Vic, Comédie de Genève, Holland Festival, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, L’Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, The Lowry, The National Theatre of Iceland, Oxford Playhouse, Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen and Theatre Royal Plymouth.

Adapted from the novel by Olga Tokarczuk

Directed by Simon McBurney

Set and Costume Design Rae Smith

Lighting Design Paule Constable

Sound Design Christopher Shutt

Video Design Dick Straker

Additional Direction Kirsty Housley

Dramaturgy by Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre and Laurence Cook

Movement Direction Toby Sedgwick

Original Compositions Richard Skelton

Original novel translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Artwork by Patryk Hardziej

Trailer