A line of performers dressed as Kings and Queens begin to tell a story. It is a long and mutating story, remixing everything from film plots, to traditional tales, jokes, scary stories, love stories, extraordinary stories and children’s stories. Over the six hour performance audience members are free to come and go as they please while the mood shifts between laughter, absurdity and surprising tenderness in this unique performance by international innovators Forced Entertainment.

We are so fortunate to have one of the world’s leading performance companies on our doorstep in Sheffield. Forced Entertainment have been making powerful, playful inroads into our understanding of theatre for more than two decades and they just get better. This rarely seen performance is improvised around a structure and lives in the moment. Six hours of storytelling, one-upmanship, tenderness, hilarity and grind. It’s a festival special and you can come and go as you please over the evening – but I think you’ll want to stay. Annie Lloyd

A line of performers dressed as Kings and Queens begin to tell a story. It is a long and mutating story, remixing everything from film plots, to traditional tales, jokes, scary stories, love stories, extraordinary stories and children’s stories.

Over the six hour performance audience members are free to come and go as they please while the mood shifts between laughter, absurdity and surprising tenderness in this unique performance by international innovators Forced Entertainment.

‘One of the most influential new British theatre companies of the last 20 years.’  The Guardian

Commissioned by Ayloul Festival, Beirut Forced Entertainment is funded by Arts Council England and Sheffield City Council.

We break theatre to see what we can build from the wreckage
Friday 18 November: Yorkshire Post
Forced Entertainment’s Tim Etchells writes about Void Story at the LBT and And on the Thousandth Night at Howard Assembly Room (part of Compass Festival of Live Art)

About Forced Entertainment

Forced Entertainment are a group of six artists based in Sheffield. They started working together in 1984 and aim to explore what theatre and performance can mean in contemporary life.

The work Forced Entertainment make is always a kind of conversation or negotiation. They are interested in making performances that excite, frustrate, challenge, question and entertain, inspiring confusion as well as laughter. “It’s seriously playful work and we’re still trying to answer our questions about theatre and performance – about what those things might be for us and what kinds of dialogue they can open with contemporary audiences.”

As well as performance works, Forced Entertainment has made gallery installations, site-specific pieces, books, photographic collaborations, videos and even a mischievous guided bus tour.