An interview with Tim Etchells on table-top Shakespeare and the 40-year evolution of a theatrical collective

When you’re thinking of what makes a typical theatre show, a few things may come to mind – a defined script, a clear storyline, realistic characters brought to life on stage by a team of actors. For the Sheffield-based collective Forced Entertainment, all of the above is something to avoid. They’ve spent over four decades questioning our understanding of theatre, and creating playful, comical, sometimes improvised performances that are anything but typical.

Their performance work Selected Works: Tabletop Shakespeare has been a project over 10 years in the making, in which Forced Entertainment aimed to tell the stories of all 36 Shakespeare plays, using ordinary objects from salt and pepper pots to sponges, as the actors, and a simple table as the stage.

Out of this full canon, Forced Entertainment have picked a number of plays as part of Selected Works for this regional UK tour, visiting venues around Yorkshire, with performances presented as double bills – audiences can expect to experience a tragedy and the comedy, right after each other.

Tim Etchells, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Forced Entertainment explains; “It’s about the magical transformation that occurs when the audience invests in these objects as characters. Whether it’s red and green objects for the Montagues and Capulets, or items scavenged from a shed to give Macbeth a brutal feel, it relies on that direct, lo-fi storytelling. You don’t need fancy period text. You need someone in the room, creating a world with what’s at hand.”

Shakespeare can often be difficult to access, with the original verse a barrier for many audiences. With Selected Works, Forced Entertainment aims to knock that barrier down. The performers use language to describe the events of the plays, condensing down epic narratives into a fun, accessible, one hour-long performance. “It’s an intimate, playful celebration of what theatre can be using minimal resources,” Tim notes. “Audiences don’t need prior knowledge of Shakespeare to engage with it.”

Forced Entertainment have developed their own very unique way of working as a team, where every member contributes to the whole.

“We are a particular breed of theatre makers,” Etchells says. “We work in the studio; we make things in the rehearsal room. We are terrible at knowing much in advance. My role is to be on the outside, watching, while everyone else is in the middle of the joyous confusion. That gives me a different insight.”

“We tend to try a lot of different alternatives as we’re making a show. We say we’re eliminating possibilities from our inquiries! You do the work to the point where it becomes clear what the direction needs to be. It’s almost like you haven’t made a decision – the work has made it for you.”

It’s a philosophy that has served them well over four decades – and has allowed audiences around the world to truly feel a part of the performance on stage: “I’m interested in creating performance spaces where the audience has a lot of imaginative work to do. I don’t want to lecture. I don’t want to tell people what to think. I want to create a field of energy that is funny, unsettling and playful, where the audience negotiates the politics, the emotion, and the reality of what’s in front of them.”

Forced Entertainment’s Selected Works: Tabletop Shakespeare will tour to venues across the North of England including Sheffield Theatres 10-12 Nov and Cast, Doncaster 13 & 14 Nov. For more information and to book tickets, visit here.