Selected Works sees Forced Entertainment craft beautifully condensed versions of all of the Bard’s plays, intimately retelling them using a collection of everyday objects on a metre-square
table-top. The highly successful project has been presented at venues and festivals around the world including Berlin, Paris, Chicago, Los Angeles, Rome, Adelaide, Brussels and the Barbican Centre, London and works for all kinds of audiences, whether they know the plays or not. Each work re-tells the story of a Shakespeare play in a unique and highly accessible way. A performer sits at an ordinary table, and narrates the play’s story using everyday objects as stand-ins for the characters – a bottle of balsamic vinegar for Hamlet, an old jam jar for Lady Macbeth, a paper flower in a small vase for Ophelia…
Friday 6 March:
The Comedy of Errors: A title you can trust – this really is confusing. Two pairs of twins turn Ephesus upside down.
King Lear: The first edition of this inheritance thriller in 1608 is called: “The True Chronicle History of the Life and Death of King Lear and his Three Daughters” – with, frequently forgotten, “the Unfortunate Life of Edgar, son and heir to the Earl of Gloster…”
Forced Entertainment is a Sheffield-based theatre company founded in 1984. Touring and presenting their unique, ground-breaking performances across the UK, Europe, and the rest of
the world, the group have sustained a remarkable collaborative practice for more than forty years, producing work that explores and often explodes the conventions of genre, narrative and theatre itself, drawing influence not just from drama but from dance, performance art, music culture and popular forms such as cabaret and stand-up.
