08/06/2026
Just announced: Questions for John will premiere in Switzerland at Théâtre de Vidy this year before embarking on a tour of the UK and Europe in 2027.
Read more: www.complicite.org/news/questions-for-john-to-premiere-this-autumn-at-theatre-vidy-lausanne
John Berger and Simon McBurney conversed, collaborated, freely supported and intimately shared their collective processes for 25 years, from 1992 to 2017.
Around the kitchen table in John’s house in the Haute-Savoie, in Simon’s flat on the Holloway Road, and in rehearsal rooms across Europe, their conversations circled the same questions that now press in on us with renewed force: how to remain human in the face of violence, how to keep faith with the dead, how to look without turning away, and how to act when answers are no longer enough.
Questions for John holds the echoes of that relationship while asking the most urgent questions about how, or if, we can respond to the events of our time. Events that mean, inevitably, we have questions we long to be answered, but which are perhaps unanswerable.
What has become of the bonds that unite us?
Why do we destroy what we love?
And what can art do today?
Simon and John collaborated on numerous projects including Mnemonic, A Disappearing Number and The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol, a stage adaptation of Berger’s text Into Their Labours.
Conceived, written and performed by Simon McBurney.
Directed by Omar Elerian.
With dramaturgy by Max Porter.
Set and costume design by Tim Hatley.
The 2027 tour of Questions for John so far includes stops at MC93, Paris and Les Célestins, Théâtre de Lyon next June. Further tour dates will be announced soon.
Find out more: www.complicite.org/work/questions-for-john
A Complicité co-production with Théâtre de Vidy, Edinburgh International Festivall, Festival Les Nuits de Fourvière - Officiel, MC93 and Les Célestins, Théâtre de Lyon, in association with the Barbican Centre, London.
📷 Hannes Flaschberger / Russell Warren-Fisher
