Forced Entertainment
Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare
Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare © Hugo Glendinning ©
Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare © Hugo Glendinning ©
Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare © Hugo Glendinning ©
Conceived and devised by Forced Entertainment
Directed by Tim Etchells
Text, Robin Arthur, Tim Etchells, Jerry Killick, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden, and Terry O’Connor
With Robin Arthur, Nicki Hobday, Jerry Killick, Richard Lowdon, Cathy Naden, and Terry O’Connor
Stage design, Richard Lowdon
Sound and lighting, Jim Harrison
A Forced Entertainment production
A coproduction with Foreign Affairs – Berliner Festspiele ; Theaterfestival Basel
In association with Théâtre de la Ville-Paris ; and Festival d’Automne à Paris
With support from the British Council
First performed on 25 June 2015 at Berliner Festspiele
In partnership with France Culture
The challenge laid down by Forced Entertainment is to present a complete works of Shakespeare, consisting of intimate, gently comic summaries of each piece. Sitting at a table, and with the aid of a few props, one actor at a time from the UK collective renders up the various dramaturgical intrigues in highly original ways.
Where the prince usually sits, we find a vase. And the king and queen have been replaced by salt and pepper pots. In Complete Works : Table Top Shakespeare, the director Tim Etchells brings Shakespeare alive before our very eyes using a couple of square inches of bare table-top. Each of the great English master’s thirty-six works is resumed in less than an hour. The approach is a highly informal one, with an actor manipulating everyday objects in the place of puppets. In their thirty or so years of existence, Forced Entertainment has never delved into Shakespeare. Real Magic, presented at the 2017 edition of the Festival d’Automne gave us our first taste of the work of this Sheffield-based company. Its approach is a unique one, never ceasing to entertain but also posing questions about language and its limits at the same time. From Macbeth to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, taking in Shakespeare’s lesser known works en route, Forced Entertainment’s latest production calls upon the audience’s imagination. How can we summon up theatrical illusion with next to nothing? Dividing up the various comedies, tragedies and historical plays between them, the six actors conjure up the magic of the different works using the power of the spoken word, making them accessible to all. Come and rediscover a bit of Shakespeare, or a piece, to be more precise. One, two, ten, or all thirty six of them, in fact, in miniature format.
––––––
Performed in English
In the same place
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Radouan Mriziga / Rosas, A7LA5 Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione
In collaboration with the choreographer and dancer Radouan Mriziga, the challenge taken up by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is to make Vivaldi's Four Seasons heard, using the tools of dance to hone the way we listen to this baroque masterpiece. Under the auspices of abstraction, the resulting alliance reconnects with the imaginary ecological world that is conjured up by this famous concerto.
Rabih Mroué Who’s Afraid of Representation?
We find ourselves in the company of major figures of European Body Art (Joseph Beuys, Orlan, Marina Abramović, to name a few) via their accounts of exhibitions and public scarifications dating back to the 1970s. In parallel with this runs the true story of a killing spree carried out by a Lebanese office at his workplace, and the fluctuating motivations for his acts.
Lola Arias Los días afuera
At the crossroads between musical and documentary, Lola Arias brings us a choral composition in which six female former inmates talk about their lives during and after incarceration. Their six intertwining destinies raise questions about the various forms of violence present in contemporary society, whilst exploring the margins of fiction and reality at the same time.
Robert Wilson PESSOA – Since I've been me
The hero of this new work by Robert Wilson is Fernando Pessoa. And a paradoxical hero at that. The Portuguese poet spent his life 'multiplying himself', inventing heteronyms, or fictitious authors, to whom he attributed works he himself wrote. He even went as far as to invent relationships, either amicable ones or from master to disciple, between his different avatars.
Jan Martens VOICE NOISE
In this breakthrough piece for Jan Martens, VOICE NOISE brings together six dancers to shape a soundscape comprising some of the great female performers and composers of our time. In his own pop-inspired and precise way, the choreographer questions a very contemporary story, and in doing so raises the question of how some of these voices were silenced.