During reading week the group was tasked with researching into a particular artist/performance company and presenting information based on a site specific performance they have created. The company I decided to research was Forced Entertainment and their piece entitled Dreams winter; an interesting site specific performance that took place in, and was inspired by, the Manchester Central Library.
The Library is a circular dome shaped building, much like the Pantheon in Rome, with bookshelves stacked in rows directing towards the centre of the room like spokes on a bike wheel. An article from The Independent newspaper says that the architecture of the domed ceiling allowed for sound to echo and travel in interesting and surprising ways, which is another aspect that is shared with the Pantheon in Rome. (For article see link at bottom.)
The performance itself was inspired from the books and stories surrounding the library. They took the library space and transformed it from a place of silence to a place of creation and sound. They took the architecture of the building and used it to their advantage by scaling the shelves and climbing up and across ledges and walkways within the room. Tim Etchells said himself in the same newspaper article: ‘A library is where lovers meet and where spies exchange information. We were drawn to the idea of animating the stories and secrets contained in all the books, as well as conjuring the ghosts of past library users, invoking the voices of authors and characters, as well as readers. There are lots of stimulating contradictions: it’s full of voice yet you’re supposed to be silent; a reader sits in one place yet this consciousness travels unfettered …’
Whilst in the process of creating a site specific performance I have chosen to research into Forced Entertainment and their site specific work. Through researching into their methods of work I hoped to find material that would possibly influence the creative decisions when constructing my final site specific piece.
I started my research on Forced Entertainment through visiting their website:http://www.forcedentertainment.com in order to get an outline of their past performances, before further researching into their site specific work.
An Introduction to Forced Entertainment
Forced Entertainment is a Sheffield based Theatre Company made up of six artists, including their Artistic Director Tim Etchells. The company was created in 1984 and has produced a multitude of different projects and performances of varying styles and genres.
On Forced Entertainments website they describe some of their own work by saying they have “made lists, played games, spoken gibberish, stayed silent, made a mess, dressed up, stripped down, confessed to it all, performed magic tricks, told jokes, clowned around, played dead, got drunk, told stories and performed for six, twelve and even 24 hours at a stretch” (Corporation Pop, 2016)
Site Specific Performances
Forced Entertainments’ first large scale site specific project titled Dreams’ Winter, was performed within the Manchester Central Library building.
An image from the performance of Forced Entertainments Dreams’ Winter
The piece was created in 1994 and responded directly to the site by using features of the buildings architecture within the performance. “Much of the performance made use of the whispering gallery acoustic of the space whereby conversations or sounds from one side of the room can be heard crystal clear on the other” (Corporation Pop, 2016).
An image of actors using the space and physical objects in the site from Forced Entertainments Dreams’ Winter
This piece shows how the use of space and features of a specific site can be incorporated into the performance and allows the site to become part of the piece rather than merely the location facilitating the performance.
Another site specific performance I researched was Forced Entertainments’ Nights in this City. The project was created in 1995 and first based in Sheffield, but was later relocated to Rotterdam. The piece consisted of a ‘misguide’ wherein the audience were bussed around and told both true and false information about their surroundings in order to explore “the different histories written in urban space — from the official and the historical to the personal, the mythical and the imaginary” (Corporation Pop, 2016). The piece ended with an installation, featuring a map of the city drawn out in chalk.
An image of the city map drawn out in chalk from Forced Entertainments Nights In This City
This site specific project displays how Forced entertainment responded to space and created a performance which challenged the audience’s assumptions and possible recognition of spaces and places on a city wide scale.
Within this interview Walser asks questions such as “If there were a tangible contract between the performers and the audience, what in your opinion is the most important thing this contract would include?”. Tim Etchells responded to this question, outlining Forced entertainments relations with their audience through explaining that “the most important thing as an audience member is an openness to being there” (Corporation Pop, 2016). This quote displays how Etchells believes the contract between audiences and actors goes both ways, meaning that the audience have a significant role in the performances, in the sense that they are key to receiving the performance, signifying that their pieces are driven largely by attempting to evoke certain reactions from audiences, or by addressing audiences directly.
Documentation of/and Access to their work:
A majority of Forced Entertainments work has been documented their website and can be freely accessed. However within Graham Saunders book British Theatre companies 1980-1994, Saunders describes how “one might expect to find the experience of attempting to chart [Forced Entertainments’] history rather daunting. An enormous amount of labour has been dedicated to documenting, recording and analysing Forced Entertainment’s work: so much so that any formal attempt to construct a history will be inevitably limited and partial” (Saunders, 2015).
This quote describes how although documented on a publicly accessible website, for a company that’s been creating work for over thirty years it’s difficult to understand the full amount of effort that went into each piece through merely a summary, displaying how all the groups works and labour is not fully reflected. Despite this, the documentation still gives people an overview of Forced Entertainments work which functions to showcase their previous performances and promote their future work.
Overall I’ve found the task of researching Forced Entertainment helpful in the creative process of making a site specific piece. Through analysing their methods of working and how they approach space and incorporate audiences, I believe I have found aspects of their work I wish to include in my final piece.
Works Cited:
Corporation Pop (2016) Forced Entertainment. Available from http://www.forcedentertainment.com/ [accessed 25 February 2016].
Saunders, G. (2015) British theatre companies 1980-1994 : Joint Stock Theatre Company, Gay Sweatshop, Théâtre de Complicité, Forced Entertainment, Women’s Theatre Group, and Talawa. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama.
10/2/16. Jaimie, Jake and I were thinking of what our idea could be. We decided to ‘drift’ around The Drill Hall again and we saw two memorial stones of two soldiers who fought during World War I, Lance Corporal Leonard Keyworth and Corporal James Upton.
In relation to the two soldiers, we were told to create a Site Specific Performance involving them. We decided to perform the Site in this room of The Drill Hall because we wanted to create a trench behind the bars.
For this session however, we decided to perform in the dark so the audience could only hear. How we wanted the audience to feel when they experience our performance was we wanted the audience to feel how War soldiers such as James Upton and Leonard Keyworth felt during World War I. We wanted to make the audience feel as if they were in a battle. We wanted them to pay tribute to them and make them show more respect for the soldiers who fought for us. We did this by placing an audience member in a chair and placing a soldier’s hat on their head and a blanket over their shoulders. We then turned the lights off in order to make the room dark.
Rob Anthony and I researched into Forced Entertainment which mainly explores what theatre and performance can mean in contemporary life. They make performances that challenge, but excite the audience members. They attempt to push the boundaries of theatre by doing things people do during their every day life.
A great example of Forced Entertainment is a video I watched on YouTube called The Notebook directed by Tim Etchells and written by Agota Kristof. It was an intriguing performance based on the impact of World War II with a style that saw its two actors (Richard Lowdon and Robin Arthur) speaking in sync with each other for 135 minutes with no interval.
‘Climaxes don’t have to be produced, resolutions are not needed. It is what it is’.
. (Etchells, 2007). Forced Entertainment wanted freedom to do whatever they want in their pieces. They wanted to focus more on changeableness and fluidity instead of structuring.
Etchells, T. (2007). Tom Etchell’s white and performer character. [online] Forced Entertainment Project. [Accessed 28 Feb. 2016].
My group and I are interested in using audio and sound in are final piece. Janet Cardiff’s work primarily focuses on this in her pieces. The piece that I found most interesting out of her work is “The forty part motet.” This is a sound installation piece that involves 40 separately recorded voices that are played back through forty speakers strategically placed throughout the space.
Whilst watching this piece closely on YouTube I could hear each individual sound coming faintly from the different speakers. I could only imagine that being a part of the experience would create an emotionally evocative sound sculpture that feels intimate even within a public space. Having the opportunity to listen to an individual speaker or listening to them all as a whole would allow an audience member to feel free, to create their own story and to be their own director and producer. The sense of freedom you get within this piece is inspirational.
KQED states “The Forty Part Motet triggers emotional responses rarely seen in the sterile world of contemporary art. Some of my fellow listeners turned inward, their eyes open but unseeing; some walked slowly around the oval of speakers, stopping to experience each voice. Some closed their eyes and abandoned themselves to wash of sound. As an external soundtrack, the piece turns a pleasant but unremarkable view of the marina into something like an ecstatic experience.” (KQED arts, 2015) This article reinforces my previous point that the audience members can create their own performance with the freedom throughout the piece, each member of the audience had a different experience.
