Forced Entertainment
12AM: Awake & Looking Down
© © Hugo Glendinning ©
© © Hugo Glendinning ©
A show conceived and devised by Forced Entertainment
Direction, Tim Etchells
With Jerry Killick, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden, Terry O’Connor
Stage design, Richard Lowdon
Lighting design, Nigel Edwards, and Richard Lowdon
Soundtrack, John Avery
This show is presented in association with Les Spectacles vivants – Centre Pompidou and Festival d’Automne à Paris.
A production byForced Entertainment
Commissioned by National Review of Live Art Glasgow
In association with Les Spectacles vivants – Centre Pompidou (Paris) ; and Festival d’Automne à Paris
Five actors, an overflowing wardrobe and a series of signs... These are the apparently simple ingredients of a hilarious, hypnotic performance that goes beyond all norms. It brings to the stage the capacity of theatre to give life to characters and make us believe in the fictions they create.
“A nine year-old shepherd”, “the hypnotised girl”, “Elvis Presley (the dead singer)”, “An air-hostess forgetting her divorce”... Written on cardboard signs, these names and attributes summon up a whole host of ephemeral identities for the five performers in search of characters. For the duration of the six hour-long performance, the individuals onstage try out these designations on themselves and on others, thereby investigating the gaps in existence between appearance and identity, actor and character, words and things. The audience, free to enter and leave at will, becomes attached to these sections of narrative and characters which seem strangely familiar to them, even though they are born from nothing more than a costume and a few gestures or words. First performed in 1993, the piece was a turning-point in Forced Entertainment's work, taking them in the direction of an increasingly pared-down exploration of language, duration, and interaction with the audience. The piece is an ode to the faculty of theatre to create magic with the most summary means.
In the same place
Mathilde Monnier Territoires
In Territoires, Mathilde Monnier will be taking over the galleries of the Centre Pompidou during the course of a weekend in order to bring us a piece that deals with memory and circulation, "a collection of gestures from her work over the past thirty years". In doing so, the choreographer sets up the possibility of playing out memory in the present, from now onwards, or by means of anticipation.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul Complete retrospective of films and videos
Apichatpong Weerasethakul presents the complete retrospective of his films at the Centre Pompidou. It consists of his eight feature films, thirty or so short (and rare) films, various collective works, and two feature films produced by him.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul Night Particles
The Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul is guest at the Festival d'Automne and Centre Pompidou. His exhibition, featuring around ten video installations, transforms the former solarium into a nocturnal space inhabited by biographical and architectural reminiscences.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul A Conversation with the Sun (VR), extended edition
The Thai filmmaker's second foray into performance art, A Conversation with the Sun (VR), extended edition, presented in Paris in a new version enhanced by a third part, uses virtual reality to create the conditions for a collective dream.
Ligia Lewis Still Not Still
In Still Not Still, choreographer Ligia Lewis pursues her exploration into the silences and shadows of history. In this piece, the performers play out a score over and over again, the burlesque dimension of which makes it all the more tragic.
Forced Entertainment Signal to Noise
Over its forty years of existence, with Tim Etchells at the helm, the company has never stopped reinventing itself. And it continues to do so. Amidst an oscillating form of virtual reality, six performers find themselves deprived of their voices and their entire beings. The whole thing goes beyond all understanding... Welcome to this new world.
Sébastien Kheroufi Par les villages
Sébastien Kheroufi discovered Peter Handke's Par les villages at the onset of his artistic career. It evokes a writer's return to his native village. Amidst the twilight setting in which one universe declines in favour of another, the voices of the “offended and humiliated” break their silence.