"If it works inside stereotypes for a while, as it often does, it always finds a way to crack them open or break them"
"Punk is a reference point because of its 'you can do it' spirit. It's also quite suspicious of skill, it relies on attitude and a need to do something"
YOU only have to look at the promotional poster for Spectacular, the latest show by Sheffield-based performance company Forced Entertainment, to guess that there is a certain irony in the title.
A woman lies on a bare stage, a simple purple light
shining on her. To her right stands a man in a preposterous skeleton costume (a black outfit with the bones of the human body painted crudely on it). If this is a spectacle, it certainly is not of the type suggested by West End musicals or Hollywood blockbuster movies.
The clash between title and image is entirely intended. "The title places the bar high in terms of what you might be expecting visually or in terms of melodramatic noise", explains Tim Etchells, artistic director of Forced Entertainment. As so often with the company's work, the intention of the show is to subvert expectations.
"We are interested, as a company, in the live event," Etchells continues. "It's quite a fragile transaction between the stage and the audience. Something quite intangible is happening in front of you. That is spectacular, but absolutely not in a conventional, cinematic way."
The idea that a theatre production can be simultaneously fragile and spectacular is a paradoxical one. However, as theatregoers who have experienced Forced Entertainment's work in the past will testify, it is a rewardingly creative paradox.
Look again at the poster for Spectacular. The woman is prone, her eyes closed. Is she dead or sleeping? The skeleton is a traditional symbol of death, but his costume is absurd. Is he meant to be menacing or comic? Not for the first time, a Forced Entertainment show seems to be resisting the question, "What is this show about?"
"Death is in it," says Etchells, "but, more than anything else, Spectacular is about the moment of the show and the transaction between the show and the audience. It's also about the transaction between Robin and Claire, the two performers; it puts them side by side, but it never really connects them. That is a source of some comedy, and some puzzlement."
Spectacular opens with the skeleton-costumed man coming on stage and outlining for the audience the various problems afflicting this evening's performance. The lights, he tells us, aren't right. There are cast members missing. In fact, the whole thing sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.
In this sense, it is a show about the strange vulnerability of putting on a live show. It is also, with its female performer opposite a male actor, about gender relations. Forced Entertainment are a company of six artists, three women and three men. A playful and, some would say, quietly egalitarian approach to gender has always existed within their shows.
"The work gets made by improvisation and group suggestion making," Etchells comments. "There's always been this sense that the men and the women in the company have the same starting point, going out on stage and trying to make something that will fly.
"The work often plays with gender and with expectations of the behaviour of men and women, but it's always interested in flipping that around. If it works inside stereotypes for a while, as it often does, it always finds a way to crack them open or break them. Often the bloke will take centre stage, but only really so that the women can come sneaking around and smash it all to pieces." The improvisatory nature of the company's work gives it a rough-and-ready feel and a sense of volatility, as if anything could happen at any moment. This, however, is a mere theatrical deception. Unlike many companies in the performance art field – who seem to repeat clichéd images with very little sense of professionalism or purpose – Forced Entertainment are masters at staging engaging, beautifully crafted productions which, nevertheless, manufacture the illusion of having been newly created that evening.
This method, Etchells explains, has its origins in the punk revolution of the 1970s. "Punk is very strong for me. I was, more or less, the right age for it to be the musical moment of my teenage years. It remains a reference point because of its 'you can do it' spirit. It's also quite suspicious of skill, it relies on attitude and a need to do something, rather than saying, 'I can do this thing, isn't it great?' There's a DIY aspect to punk, and that's always been lurking in Forced Entertainment's culture. We like the energy of work that is thrown together, rough-and-ready and collaged."
The fact is, however, that punk was a youth subculture. Only its millionaires, such as Malcolm McLaren and John Lydon, made their way into the cultural mainstream. Even today, the word "punk" is, in the UK at least, synonymous with being on the cultural margins. Do Forced Entertainment – who enjoy some acclaim and success on mainland Europe – remain marginalised within British theatre?
"We have a certain place in the UK, as a company," Etchells comments. "We have a certain level of support and respect, after working for 24 years. However, I do feel that you kind of get given a corner to play in, and, as long as you don't stray out of that corner, nobody minds. It's like there's a distinct space to go and do weird stuff in. What is missing is the opportunity to perform the work in a different context or the chance to take the centre ground. "If we were based in Brussels or Berlin that would be different. On the continent they are more open to different approaches to theatre, and you can go further with that experimentation. Now, in the UK, we have a little bit of traction into larger venues, but, in mainland Europe, we've been playing in those sorts of spaces for a long time. On the continent, these big theatres are open to experimental work, there's no expectation that they'll just be doing a load of boring repertory plays."
One of the larger spaces that Forced Entertainment are able to play in the UK is Glasgow's Tramway arts venue. This is hardly surprising, given the centre's excellent track record of staging some of the most groundbreaking and experimental theatre from around Europe and elsewhere.
Like the other work created over Forced Entertainment's quarter century, Spectacular aims, its director says, to "seem free, unscripted, playful and a little bit anarchic". If it feels like it could unravel at any time, it's meant to feel that way.
"Personally," Etchells says, "I relate more strongly to those who try and fail than to those whose work is perfectly accomplished."
Spectacular is at Tramway, Glasgow, tomorrow until Saturday, 8pm. Call 0845 3303501 or visit
www.tramway.orgAnd on the Thousandth Night…(2000)
A LONG line of performers are sitting down, wearing cardboard crowns and simple red cloaks, as if they've raided a children's dressing-up box. From standard fairytale beginnings, the stories they tell become increasingly wayward and arbitrary. Audience members are free to walk in and out as they see fit. Rarely have the rules of theatre been broken to such insightful and comic effect.
Bloody Mess (2004)
"GENUINE audience members only. No drunks. No timewasters." Forced Entertainment celebrate 20 years of theatre-making with a combination of "uncompromising political Pop Art, ironic, physically demanding camp trash and visual spectacle". A woman in a gorilla costume chucks popcorn at everyone, a degenerate cheerleader appears and the music of Black Sabbath crashes into the cello suites of JS Bach. Brilliant, organised chaos.
The World in Pictures (2006)
A SURREAL and comic history of humankind, from the cavemen to shopping mall consumer junkies. The show incorporates images stolen shamelessly from the internet and a "volcano dance" inspired by 1960s movie One Million Years BC. Think The Flintstones meets a media studies lecture meets an Eddie Izzard gig, and you're only about halfway to comprehending the sheer profundity and preposterousness of The World in Pictures.
The full article contains 1396 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
