Forced Entertainment
BLOODY MESS

  • 5 days of FORCED ENTERTAINMENT
  • Performance Performance
  • Thu 29.03.07 20 h
  • Fri 30.03.07 20 h

Forced Entertainment's Bloody Mess defies categorisation, creating a startling and comical new logic from the collisions of disconnected characters, stories and performances. Influenced by popular culture, cinema, contemporary art and the occasional dash of heavy metal, Bloody Mess takes these elements and creates a whole that is intelligent, darkly comic and unexpectedly moving.


Bloody Mess was conceived and devised by the company and is performed in English.


Widely regarded as »one of the most important performance groups in Europe,« (Der Tagesspiegel), Forced Entertainment makes consistently engaging, challenging and surprising work spanning theatre, durational performance, live art, gallery installation, video and digital media. Led by writer and director Tim Etchells, the themes the company return to are life in cities, identity and sexual politics, the relationship of lived experience to the images of media culture, the nature of language, the attractiveness of chaos and the desire for order, and the need to confess.


Five days of Forced Entertainment at PACT presents three strikingly different and acclaimed performances Exquisite Pain, Bloody Mess, and And on the Thousandth Night… together with a comprehensive fringe programme including film screenings, lectures, photo and media exhibits and after performance discussions with the artists.


Performers: Robin Arthur, Davis Freeman, Wendy Houstoun, Jerry Killick, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden, Terry O’Connor, Bruno Roubicek, John Rowley


Direction: Tim Etchells


Text: Tim Etchells and the company


Design: Richard Lowdon


Lighting Design: Nigel Edwards


Production: Crispin Hayek, Ray Rennie


Bloody Mess is co-produced by KunstenFESTIVALdesArts (Brussels), Les Spectacles vivants – Centre Pompidou (Paris), Wiener Festwochen, Festival THEATERFORMEN (Hannover) and Productiehuis Rotterdam (Rotterdamse Schouwburg), and supported by LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre) and Nuffield Theatre Lancaster. Work-in-progress performances were co-produced by SpielArt Festival (Munich).

Photo: Hugo Glendinning


Forced Entertainment is Robin Arthur, Tim Etchells (artistic director), Richard Lowdon (designer), Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O’Connor.


General Manager: Matt Burman

Administrator: Eileen Evans


Forced Entertainment is regularly funded by Arts Council England and Sheffield City Council.


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ATELIER No. 69
Experimental platform for the arts