Forced Entertainment: Interview

Tomorrow’s Parties, Forced Entertainment’s 2011 production, comes to Warwick Arts Centre studio from 22- 24 October as part of its premiere tour of the UK. Boar Arts caught up with Terry O’Connor, one half of the duo performing the play, to tell us about the company.

The artists met while studying English and Drama at the University of Exeter. They always knew that they wanted to make their own work and were fortunate enough to find one another in various arts societies at university- cinema, music and fine art to name a few. Upon graduating, Forced Entertainment was founded in 1984 with the intention to create new productions outside of the constraints of dramatic literature. There was never an interest in writing and staging plays, Terry tells me, but rather a desire to produce original collaborative pieces based on improvisation.

After leaving the South-West in the 80s, Forced Entertainment based themselves in Sheffield which has been their home ever since.  Thanks to the vibrancy of the city, the company found themselves thriving as an independent group alongside other grassroots arts activities with whom they collaborated for early shows. It was in these early days in Sheffield that they also started to incorporate film into performances.

For almost thirty years, the six artists have been making use of these collaborations in their home town and alongside other artists. The close rapport within the group is evident- because of their history and shared vocabulary they don’t need to spend a lot of time translating their ideas. Instead the creative process is a direct discussion between people who have a trusting relationship built on years of experience. This performance vernacular, as Terry calls it, feeds into their work process every time Forced Entertainment begin a new piece. Having such familiarity with each other can lead to frustration though, acting as an incentive to further break the form of theatre and try new techniques.

The creative process itself is built up of several elements. Sometimes the company base their discussion on previous pieces- aspects they would like to develop further or forget about entirely. Other times a production comes from a scrapbook of ideas. A piece of text, a look; often it is not something intellectually or conceptually coherent that forms the basis of a Forced Entertainment show but simply a shard of performative texture that sparks the imagination. Terry believes that other artists will be able to relate to this organic creative process; work can start from the smallest of things as long as your response is to create something, even if the initial ideas are rejected. It is the exploration through improvisation and discussion that ultimately shapes a Forced Entertainment production.

Tomorrow’s Parties is no exception to this rule. Commissioned for the Festival Belluard Bollwerk International in Switzerland, the company worked from two starting points: the piece had to be performed in a small space and incorporate ideas about hope. At first themes of “hopefulness” and “bad luck” were researched but were found not to be performative. It was when Forced Entertainment decided to only use two performers discussing possibilities for the future that the show started to take shape. By fluke, the first time they improvised they created most of the opening section of Tomorrow’s Parties.

Two years on, this piece is a huge success across Europe. Translated subtitles are relayed on a screen above the performance, allowing Tomorrow’s Parties to be extremely adaptable for the foreign stage. Bringing the show to an English speaking audience will draw out new elements of texture and speech, Forced Entertainment feel, although they are proud of the production’s pertinence and popularity in Europe. Tomorrow’s Parties is improvised speech captured and performed by different combinations of performers, and hesitations and performance techniques may play differently to a native audience. As well as this, the various pieces, each with different performance modes, from the repertoire along the tour breathe life into each other, making Tomorrow’s Parties a fluid production.

By contrast to other Forced Entertainment productions such as 2013’s large-scale collaboration with Tarek Atoui, The Last Adventures, Tomorrow’s Parties has a stripped down integrity. This intimate piece brings the two performers close to the audience, consisting purely of unamplified, direct speech. This engagement with the audience is accepted as part of the contract of the piece and the company enjoy inviting the audience to imagine with them, encouraging people to make their own journey from the production.

Terry’s advice for students hoping to work in the theatre? See as much as you can, and not solely theatre but inform your work with other mediums of art such as music and film. Trust improvisation and discussion; just do it. This is advice that Forced Entertainment clearly take to heart themselves. They are not afraid to play with theatrical boundaries and create beautiful, original work.