Simon McBurney is a theatre director fascinated by the physicality of performance; Crystal Pite a choreographer who, particularly through her collaborations with actor and writer Jonathon Young, has developed a distinctive way of threading movement with words. Their Figures in Extinction trilogy uses the common ground of their artistic interests to reach towards a higher goal, also shared: a consciousness of our climate crisis.
The trilogy plots a purposeful path, though the swerves it takes can be hard for the audience to navigate. Part 1 is the most straightforward, and the most complete in itself: a series of portraits of different life forms — animals, plants, glaciers, seas — that have been driven to extinction by human activity. The marvellous choreographic variety of action, ...
