Forced Entertainment

In this simple and intimate performance Forced Entertainment explore how language, memory and forgetting move to contain, preserve or erase events; how people come to terms with trauma. Based on a project by the renowned French conceptual artist Sophie Calle, Exquisite Pain is about love, loss, and the stories we tell ourselves when things have gone wrong.

Exquisite Pain 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: Forced Entertainment

Direction: Tim Etchells

Text and Images: Sophie Calle

Design: Richard Lowdon

Lighting Design: Nigel Edwards

Exquisite Pain is co-produced by Theater der Welt 2005 (Stuttgart), BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen), The National Museum of Art, Design and Architecture (Oslo), Kaaitheater (Brussels), La Filature, scène nationale de Mulhouse, and Tanzquartier Wien.

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.