Formation | 1984 |
---|---|
Type | Theatre group |
Location |
|
Artistic director(s) | Tim Etchells |
Website | www |
Forced Entertainment is an experimental theatre company based in Sheffield, England, founded by Tim Etchells in 1984. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Forced Entertainment originally focused on making and touring theatre performances before expanding to long durational performance, live art, video and digital media. [4] [5] Their work has been presented throughout the UK and Europe [4] as well as Australia, Japan, Canada and the US. [2] [6] They develop projects using a collaborative process – devising work as a group through improvisation, experimentation and debate. [2] [7] Their core members are Tim Etchells (artistic director), [1] [2] Richard Lowdon (designer and performer) [2] and performers Robin Arthur, [2] [8] Claire Marshall, [2] [8] Cathy Naden [2] and Terry O'Connor, [2] who have all been with the company from the start. [1] [9]
A book was published about them in 2004, "Not Even a Game Anymore": The Theatre of Forced Entertainment. [10] In 2012 BBC Radio 4 aired a programme following their creative process developing, writing and rehearsing The Coming Storm. [1]
Joyce McMillan, writing in The Scotsman, called Forced Entertainment "legendary". [8] David Tushingham, writing in the Financial Times, called them "The best group of stage actors in Britain". [39] Robert Avila, writing in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, considered them "internationally successful and storied". [3] Lyn Gardner, writing in The Guardian, has said that "Beyond these shores, however, the company is regarded as one of the greatest British theatrical exports of the past 20 years. ... It is this ability to smash through the pretenses of theatre that has kept the company ahead of the game." [5] They have been described in The Guardian as having "produced some of the most exciting and challenging theatre of the past few decades". [40] Marie-Hélène Falcon, director of Montreal's Festival de Théatre des Amériques, said of Speak Bitterness that "I had never seen anything like it before, a piece that was so political, provocative and poetic because it was a group of artists speaking about their lives – and therefore our lives – in the most direct way," "To this day, Speak Bitterness is one of the very few experiences that have radically changed my understanding and vision of theatre". [5] The British Library claims that the group "continue to tour widely and to great acclaim throughout the world". [41]
Numerous books and journals on theatre have included chapters and essays about Forced Entertainment. [12] [15] [42] [43] [44]
The British Library holds a large collection of video and audio material documenting their performances and talks. [41]
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Foremost amongst such groups to emerge during the 1980s was Forced Entertainment which in the context of the urban landscape, confronted contemporary cultural mythology. The company was founded in 1984 and based in Sheffield. Its first "show" was Jessica in the room of Lights (1984). This was followed by Set-up and Nighthawks (1985), Let the Water Run its Course To the Sea That Made the Promise (1986) and The Day that Serenity Returned to the Ground (1986), 200% and Bloody Thirsty (1987) and Some Confusions in the Law About Love (1989)
She goes on to suggest that contemporary theatre groups such as Shefeld-based Forced Entertainment (founded 1984), Chicago-based Goat Island (1987-2009), and New York-based Elevator Repair Service (founded 1991) have used and constructed failure as an integral part of their performances.
Deborah has written about performance and contemporary culture for a number of anthologies and media, including texts for Forced Entertainment's Marathon Lexicon of Performance (2003)
Die Show mit den verrücktesten Leuten, verrücktesten Klamotten und der verrücktesten Musik/The show with the craziest people, craziest clothes and craziest music: Forced Entertainment & Tarek Atoui: The Last Adventures
2. nagroda Quizoola! Tima Etchellsa w reż. zespołowej, Forced Entertainment z Sheffield;
NRLA Honorary Associates: Robert Ayers, Neil Bartlett, Mary Brennan, Forced Entertainment, Paul Hough, Lois Keidan, Richard Layzell, Alastair MacLennan, Michael Mayhew, Stephen Partridge, Geraldine Pilgrim, Anne Seagrave, Ian Smith.
The best group of stage actors in Britain are Robin Arthur, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O'Connor.
Their experimental style has been dismissed as too messy and chaotic by some – wilfully baffling by others – but British theatre company Forced Entertainment have produced some of the most exciting and challenging theatre of the past few decades
The British Library holds a large collection of video and audio material documenting the performances and talks of Forced Entertainment.
Art Into Theatre investigates the processes of hybrid forms of performance developed between 1952 and 1994 through a series of interviews with key practitioners and over 80 pieces of documentation, many previously unpublished, of the works under discussion. Ranging from the austerity of Cage's 4'33" through the inter-species communication of Schneeman's Cat Scanand the experimental theatre work of Schechner, Foreman, and Kirby, to the recent performances of Abramovic, Forced Entertainment and the Wooster Group, Art Into Theatre offers a fascinating collection of perspectives on the destabilizing of conventional ideas of the art "object" and the theatrical "text".
Struggling to Perform: Radical Amateurism and Forced Entertainment by Sara Jane Bailes
The use of film and video is widespread in contemporary theatre. Staging the Screen explores a variety of productions, ranging from Piscator to Forced Entertainment, charting the impact of developing technologies on practices in dramaturgy and performance.