Poster advertising Theatre de Complicite in The Street of Crocodiles, adapted by Simon McBurney and Mark Wheatley from the original stories by Bruno Schulz, Queen's Theatre, 14 January to 20 February 1999.

Poster featuring a photograph of man reading a book intently, the book raised to his face. Lettering in orange and grey, below, gives the title of the production, the details of the production team and the theatre and dates. The poster has the London Arts Board logo, the Arts Council logo, and the Stoll Moss Theatres logo bottom left.

Given by Complicite

Poster produced to advertise the 1999 production of The Street of Crocodiles, Queen's Theatre, 14 January to 20 February 1999, originally a co-production with the Royal National Theatre, based on stories by Bruno Schulz, devised by the Company from an adaptation by Simon McBurney with Mark Wheatley. Directed by Simon McBurney; designed by Rae Smith; lighting by Paule Constable; sound by Christopher Shutt; movement by Marcello Magni and music by Gerard McBurney. The Company comprised Annabel Arden, Bronagh Gallagher, Antonio Gil Martinez, Eric Mallett, Clive Mendus, Stefan Metz, Cesar Sarachu, Asta Sighvats, and Matthew Scurfield. The poster was designed by Sightlines for Guy Chapman Associates, featuring a photograph by Joan Marcus.

Historical significance: The Street of Crocodiles was a workshop production originally created by Théatre de Complicité with the National Theatre's Studio and shown to an invited audience in April 1991. After a process of devising, adapting, writing and rehearsal, the production opened at the RNT's Cottesloe auditorium on 13 August 1992. It is based on the stories of the Polish writer and artist Bruno Schulz who was born in Drohobycz in 1892 and who became an art teacher there in 1924. He exhibited his paintings but by the 1930s he concentrated on writing, setting all his stories in Drohobycz. His vision was an immensely theatrical one in which human beings, objects and spaces take on temporary unstable shapes and forms before metomorphosing into new ones. Bruno Schulz was regarded as one of the three great talents of Polish literature between the wars. He was killed by the Gestapo in 1942.

The production of A Street of Crododiles toured the world between 1992 and 1994, visiting Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Spain and Switzerland. In 1998 tComplicite revived the show following an invitation to perform at the Lincoln Center Festival, New York. This revival went on to Toronto, Minneapolis and Tokyo before returning for a final London season at the Queen's Theatre in January 1999, nearly eight years after its original production.

S.129-2000