Contemporary Theater Practice Course

Presentation by Colin Smith, Natasha Duffy, Eftychia Spyridaki

RE-INVENTING THE THEATRICAL SPACE NOT IN A LITERAL WAY BUT

WITHIN THE PERFORMER-AUDIENCE RELATIONSHIP.

An introduction: (from Forced Entertainment’s website)

At the heart of Forced Entertainment is a group of six artists (Tim Etchells (Artistic Director),
Robin Arthur, Richard Lowdon (Designer), Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden, Terry O’Connor)
collaborating to make original theatre and performances together since 1984.
We develop our plans and rehearse at our base in Sheffield and tour to audiences across the UK
and around the world. We also work with young people in Sheffield and other cities in
workshops and longer projects, to help them develop creative skills and thinking and to make
performances and other works of their own.
The theatre we create is something that needs to be live, something that generates energy and
tension from its presence in a room with other people. We’re interested in making
performances that explore the contemporary world, performances that excite, challenge and
entertain other people. We’re interested in ideas at the same time as seeking to create
confusion, silence, questions and laughter.
As well as performance works, we’ve made gallery installations, site-specific pieces, books,
photographic collaborations, videos and even a mischievous guided bus tour.  The work makes
a strong link between form and content, reflecting our belief that the form of a project – the
kind of experience it presents, the contract it makes with its audience and how – is an
inseperable and significant part of its meaning. Often described as being experimental or
innovative, our work shifts approach from project to project, taking influence from movies,
internet, stand-up, dance, bad television, performance art, music culture as well as from
theatre itself. What ties the various strands of our work together is that the projects always
strive to be vivid and original, demanding a lot from audiences and giving lot in return.

SPEAK BITTERNESS,1994 by Colin Smith

 Speak Bitterness is a durational piece by Forced Entertainment, originated in 1994. It
exists as both a theatre performance of around 1h40mins length, and a durational piece
of around six hours.
 While the six hour version was reasonably successful on its first outing, Judith Helmer
suggests that the shorter version was what shot the company to international acclaim,
gaining the company international supporters after their budget was cut by Arts Council
England. This has allowed them to continue creating work, and to hire full time
administrative staff.

 The piece consists entirely of confessions, ranging from the mundane and every day to
the outrageous. The performers read pre-prepared confessions which are printed on
stacks of paper and spread out on a long table situated along the front of the stage.
They come in a constant stream, and are not interrupted with any other kind of dialogue
or written word. The truth and lies are indistinguishable. Variation is achieved both in
the outrageousness and blandness of the statements, but also in the volume and speed
with which the confessions are rattled off. There are several moments where certain
performers will begin listing off confessions either at a high volume or a high speed, and
it will seem to scare the other performers off, scuttling away from the table at the front
of the stage to the back wall. 
 Judith Helmer suggests this brings “intensity to vulnerability”, and that the piece might
be understood as an illustration or critique of society’s “Foucaultian need to confess”,
citing the popularity of confessing controversial actions on talk shows or in the tabloid
press, as well as the phenomenon of police departments receiving floods of confessions
after the uncovering of atrocities like serial murders.

THE PRESENCE OF THE PHYSICAL SCRIPT:

In an interview about the piece, Tim Etchells expresses that the choice to make the text
present on the stage is an effort to remove fictionality from the piece, and to dispel the
notion that the performers are in any way speaking from the soul or anything similar to
that. THEY MAKE CLEAR THAT THE AUDIENCE DOES NOT WITNESS PERSONAL
CONFESSIONS BUT A SCRIPT THAT WAS NEVER LEARNED BY HEART TO BE SEEN AS
ORIGINAL, ANY WAY OF MIMESIS.To reenforce that statement they use the term’’we’’
every time they are about to make a confession.
That effect is then inverted at certain points in the piece, when the performers are
clearly improvising the text, and roping each other into their improvisations. These
movements almost weaponise authenticity, using it as a tool in the same way they
might use light or sound.

LEHMAN’S ‘’MEDIUM SPACE’’:

An interesting element to this piece, and to Forced Entertainment is their insistence
upon maintaining what Lehmann calls the “medium space” that is essential in dramatic
theatre. This space gives the audience an adequate distance to observe the piece in its
entirety without being fully absorbed or involved but brings them close enough to be
 emotionally involved. He suggests that post dramatic work might tend towards a closer
space where total immersion in the action of performance, and the recognition of actors
as bodies in the space is unavoidable. 

Forced Entertainment maintains this “medium space” in their work, due to their desire
to infiltrate or invade traditional performance spaces with their work. The aim is not to
necessarily reinvent or subvert the relationship to the audience in a direct way, but
instead to expose themselves as artists and provide a viewing experience that is
different to anything else an audience might see in a given venue. It is highlighted in
Speak Bitterness by the table at the front of the stage almost forming a barrier between
themselves and the audience.

SPACE FOR THE PERFORMERS’ ‘’HERE AND NOW’’:

 Another key idea from Lehmann which is addressed here is the idea of “actors observing
each other”. This is most evident in those improvised sections of the piece, where
certain individual performers are almost stranded at the front of the stage, with no
printed confessions to read from. What we get instead are improvised confessions from
the other performers (which the stranded performer has to repeat), who are aiming to
play with the performer who is at their mercy, either getting them to corpse or to say
things that seem outrageous or uncomfortable. In these moments, the performers can
be seen to clearly acknowledge and perceive each other on that level.
 The performers also move through the piece in a seemingly improvised yet
interconnected way, finding ways to upstage one another in subtle ways like standing
on chairs or removing their jackets. I think this can also be understood as a kind of
performer-to-performer recognition and response, as opposed to a pre-prepared
choreography.
 QUIZOOLA - FORCED ENTERTAINMENT 1996 by Natasha Duffy

LIVENESS, LIMITED SPACES, UNLIMITED AMOUNTS OF TIME SPACE HOSTING THE

STRECHING TIME:

 Tim Etchells himself describes it as ‘if once upon a time there was a slapstick show, like a
circus with clowns and performers but it is all finished now. What is left is performers in
this smeared clown makeup quizzing each other about the world. Quizoola is a
durational game of questions and answers which promises theatricality but never quite
reaches this place.

MULTIPLE SPATIAL IDENTITIS AND SUBJECTIFIED SPACE:

 As a ‘show’ Quizoola has two elements; that of the pub quiz(so the stage acquires a
second identity) and that of interrogation. Two performers inhabit a simple stage area,
armed with a large stack of papers with endless questions ranging from trivia,
philosophical interrogation, personal interrogation and simple opinion questions.
 Set against these modes of questioning is the clown makeup and a stage set up that
surrounds the performers in a ring of festoon light laid on the floor, perhaps pointing to
the ‘fallen circus’ idea that Etchells speaks about. A whimsical bright sign sits at the back
of the stage saying ‘Quizoola’.
 This use of unusual spaces works within this framework also. For instance whilst doing a
show in Zurich, they decided to host it in an old Butchers cellar. Around 40 or 50 people
were in the audience and in the middle of the show the fuse went leaving them all in
complete blackness for 30 minutes not able to see each other or the questions on the
sheets. The show took a turn where they spent that time asking questions of who they
thought they could trust in the room. Lowden talks about how this ‘liveness’, embracing
of challenges is at the heart of what Quizoola is about. 

 The audience is invited into the theatrical space and for the following 8 up to 24 hours
can stay or leave the space as they please. The theatre is not a strict space of
experiencing the performance but a malleable, porous one where the audience is given
agency.
 In my opinion, the audience is held in high priority from the beginning of the show. Both
due to the porousness given to the space and also due to the structure of the show.
Quizoola has a tightly defined rule of structure so the audience is only asked to buy into
and understand that in order to be involved in the show. There is no need to have prior
knowledge of theatre or to understand surrealism or absurdity to be able to engage in
the show. From the recordings it is clear to hear that the audience are engaged and
enjoying the show; they laugh at the humorous points and there is a level of still at the
more poignant parts that is palpable.
 The spaces that Quizoola inhabits are also interesting. Richard Lowden in an interview
talks about how they like to perform Quizoola in slightly illegal and unusual spaces.
Improvisation is at the core of this show and it leans into this inhabitation of exposure,
failure and embarrassment. Basically staying inside the difficulty.
 In a way Quizoola can be seen as Anthropological in nature whereby the audience gets
to see their tricks, strategies for coping and experience in real time and over a long
duration of time how people relate to each other. 
 The name of the show I think is apt here. Like a zoo, we see these two people inhabit
this tiny space. Sitting and standing and pacing and responding to stimulants
(questions). And we the audience get to sit and reflect and observe.
 The space hosts the version of the subjected to risk performers that put themselves
intoa state of surviving uncomfortable structures,rules,suffers risk and exposure and
thus creates a subjectified space
BLOODY MESS, 2004 by Eftychia Spyridaki
FAILURE ON THE SPOT(…)/A BLOODY,MESSY COLLAGE

Each project for us remains an attempt to find a new and appropriate solution of standing up
and trying to speak before a crowd of gathered persons whom one does not know and whom
one cannot trust…you stand there, and you fail.

Bloody Mess is a two-hour piece by Forced Entertainment, created in 2004 by the company,
directed by Tim Etchells, marking the culmination of their twenty years’ work in theatre as an
epic for ten performers where disconnected characters, stories and performances collide. A
disaster…the ‘show’ crashes into energetic chaos.

The piece starts with the intension of (spatial)order. That objective of order fails after the third
minute of the show and serves as a foreshadowing of the gradual Bloody Mess; It is time for
constant failures of individual attempts of solo performances to take place. The title Bloody
Mess does not only capture the essence of the show; it is a promise well kept.
The show takes place in a traditional theater stage.
A clown appears on stage and starts placing chairs trying to align them in the front. (The stage
arrangement is thematized from the beginning and later on) Soon, he is antagonized by another
clown that seems to be determined to form a line of chairs (the same chairs), deeper into the
stage in the back. They discretely steal the chairs form one another just to end up aggressively
running back and forth with piles of half-broken chairs until the finally agree on a line in the
front.
As Tim Etchells explains, actors operate under simple rules that are often related with the
objective of conquering the space with one performer’s idea of how it should be as opposed
the another performer’s idea about it. Thus, the space is never settled or definite in Bloody
Mess. Tim Etchells describes the first scene with the clows and the chairs as a game with a
simple but clear premise: There is a stupid binary dispute between the two of them,this one
wants this, the other one wants that and from that (dispute) emerges this huge kind of
conflagration and conflict arises that is a key element to the whole performance.
Later, this leitmotif of interruption amongst the performers/this ‘’battle’’ of captivating the
audience’s attention, continues when John Lowdon, one of the two clowns form the beginning
talks about the creation of the world while being interrupted by loud music and all the other
performers continuing giving their own show on their acclaimed areas of the stage.
Following the two clowns’ dispute, the rest of the cast is introduced to the audience in a
restraint, honest-but competitive to each other- tone, in a neat line of chairs.
SPACE AS A PLACE HOSTING BANAL THEATER ARCHETYPES, STRUGGLING
PROTAGONISTS/PROTAGONISTS-WANNABES:
The stage is also the place where the cast ‘’performs’’ its own metonomies; it consists of banal
theatrical personas: the clown, the strong yet romantic male hero, the -not necessarily the
prettiest-, ‘’fuckable’’ female, the cheerleader, the talented dramatic actress, merged with the
performers’ individual objectives for tonight’s show.
They are clear from the start of the show about their subjective objectives; what those
objectives have in common the intension of captivating the audience’s attention: ‘’I want you to
think about kissing me even after the show.’’
It is also a collage of attempts to earn the audience’s attention or affection of any kind, with
short pieces of performances that only last and gain the little attention that a
show/program/advertisement gains during a late-night channel hopping.
A METONOMIC SPACE:
This show happens in a metonomic space as it complies with Lehman’s definition of a space
that does not stand for another fictive world but is instead highlighted -and in this show
thematized- as a part and continuation of the real theater space.

MANY DIFFERENT IDENTITIES DEFINING THE SPACE/ THE STAGE AS A BATTLEFIELD FOR THE
AUDIENCES ATTENTION

The pieces of the collage of the individual banal theater archetypes are happening on small,
acclaimed pieces of the stage.
These pieces of space are defined by the personas’ theatrical identity, bodies, movements,
gestures; the space gets dissected and subjectified. Each piece of the collage is associated with
each other through confrontation or competition(louder music or stealing microphones )which
gradually intensify and reach a climax that finally creates a messy stage.
SPACE AS A COMUNICATION CHANNEL:
From the start and throughout the whole course of the show, the stage’s space serves as a
channel of communication between the audience and the personas/performers. It often
‘’transforms’’ to a podium that provides the performers with time and space for speeches
about their sublective objectives or stories all of them directed to the audience. (‘’I want you to
think about me on your body on my body. I want you to see me perform and never stop crying’’)

The anatomy of the show’s following course is symptomatic, if not identical to the relationship
between space and performative behavior as it is described by F.E. ‘s Manifesto, written by Tim
Etchells :
We abandoned the rhetorical power of the stage refusing the shelter afforded by the theater,
preferring simply to be there, under the gaze…The tasks we set ourselves, or the ’protagonists’
that stood in for us were often doomed to failure from the outset…these were fluid dramas of
attempt and struggle, or floundering, never of achievement.

DUAL EXISTENCE OF SPACE:

In this show, being on the stage, being present here and now means risk. Exposure. Failed
attempts to deliver a good death scene, no matter how epic, dramatic, or loud the music is. The
stage is also the rehearsal room. The audience gets a glimpse of the rehearsal’s procedure,
mistakes and misunderstandings that are happening here and now. That space that contains
two identities/exists within a duality; that of the stage and that of the rehearsal room.

CONCLUSION: In those three pieces of F.E’s work, the stage’s identity is mostly defined by the
performers’ behavior that use its fundamental function as a place where a group of people can
be seen and heard from another group of people as Tim Etchells describes.
Once they are seen, they use the theatrical convention, not for the purposes of mimesis, or
dramatic theater but for irreparable exposure. In all three productions, defining the theatrical
space, no longer as a space of theatrical illusion but as a communication channel between two
groups of people the ‘’viewers’’ and the ‘’viewed’’;
In F.E.’s theatrical space, the group of people on stage fully acknowledge the auditorium as a
constant, clear point of reference, the real spotlight fueling and lighting performers as real
people that operate under simple rules, tasks and actions where the objective is not to
convince, preach, or impress ; there is only one simple objective and that is risk and exposure of
real people’s past and present thoughts about themselves or the audience, sharing self or
random knowledge or lack of knowledge, the performer’s narcissism at its full extend.
The result is post dramatic, re-invented theatrical space which is defined, not by literal spatial
tools,but by the relationships built between the group of people on stage and the group of
people under the stage, the witnessed and the witnesses.