British performance troupe Forced Entertainment returns to the Walker Art Center after its triumphant 40th anniversary, ready to kick off the museum’s annual “Out There” series in style.
The group will play “Exquisite pain», a work based on the text of a play of the same name by Sophie Calle, the exhibition of which is visible at the museum.
Based in Sheffield, England, the company is known as much for its extravagant choices as its captivating quiet moments. Forced Entertainment first came to Minnesota in 1996 as part of a showcase of British artists, and returned in 1999 and again in 2004, for the Out There Festival and a mini-festival of the group’s work. Most recently, the company presented its production of “Real Magic,” on a looping game show as well as an improvised play called “Quizoola” in 2018.
Just before the holidays, I met Tim Etchells, the artistic director of the group. We talked about Forced Entertainment’s secrets to longevity in the entertainment landscape, how the group brought Sophie Calle’s text to light, and what’s next.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Sheila Regan. Congratulations on 40 years of Forced Entertainment. That’s longer than most marriages. What is the secret to maintaining this thriving collaboration?
Tim Etchells: We were fortunate to find an artistic conversation that continues to be rich, fruitful and dynamic. We allowed ourselves to do different things – we didn’t lock ourselves into too strict a pattern. It’s a space where we all felt like we could keep working and find new things.
We had good supporters and consistent conversations with people from different places. I think if we had worked in the UK we wouldn’t have lasted five minutes – maybe three or four years. But it was the international work on continental Europe, but also with partners further afield, that really helped us create an economic context in which we could actually continue to work, and also where there was a sort of exchange with audiences and with different ways of thinking. what performance is and what theater is, it’s been really enriching.
SR: Where are your favorite places to travel and collaborate abroad?
TE: Sometimes the relationship is tied to the vibe of a city. Berlin has sometimes been like that. Glasgow, UK is always great. There is something raw, ready and open. Sometimes it is about the culture that a particular curator manages to install in a place or in a festival. Frie Leysen’s stay in Brussels at the Kunsten festival was very important for us. The festival, the people we met, the conversation with the public, everything was super dynamic and interesting. It’s a skill of creating a framework that allows artists to present different types of visions and creates a place where a particular type of conversation can take place.
SR: When I read some of your interviews about your relationship with Sophie Calle’s text “Exquisite Pain,” it made me think of trauma therapy that I heard about a few years ago, where Treatment involves being able to tell the story over and over again. By working with a therapist, the person takes control of the story. Do you think there’s something about what you’re doing with “Exquisite Pain” that’s about the healing power of repeating a story?
YOU: Yeah, I think so. I think there’s an element of that in Sophie’s project. Right off the bat, she had what she calls the night she suffered the most. It’s a breakup and she’s devastated. She returns from New Delhi and tells the whole story to her first friend. She says: “The first time I told the story it took me 12 hours and I cried the whole time. “And then the next day she met someone else, and it lasted eight hours, and she was crying most of the time. So we can already see that there is a sort of reduction.
Telling and telling is also a way – through storytelling – of accessing different perspectives. The tone changes. Some details are starting to emerge. At one point she starts to get angry, at another point she starts to laugh a little at what happened. We feel a little from one version to another that things are moving.
SR: Was Sophie Calle involved in your production?
TE: We contacted her through the festival that originally commissioned the piece, and she was pretty game. I think she came to see “Bloody Mess” and she still said yes. I think after seeing “Bloody Mess,” which is one of our most theatrical pieces, she was a little shocked by how minimal and intimate and direct we were with her text. I think maybe she imagined we were going to engage in all sorts of ridiculous theatrical behavior.
SR: In chicken outfits?
YOU: Exactly. But I think it has to do with the fact that we also recognize that what she has in the text is a perfect piece of fabric. It’s a beautiful spell. It’s an incantation, basically, and there’s no point in meddling with it. You just have to do it.
SR: Does it evolve over the years as you play it and revisit it?
YOU: I think so. It’s not about pretending in the same way that some plays might do. Much depends on the energy and possibilities of the human beings who do it. We are older. Richard and Claire, who played her, are older. Their energy is different.
What’s interesting to me is that all the questions you might ask about acting come up when I think about this play. There’s a whole problem in the extent to which they rely on what they say and the extent to which they walk away from it. In a way, it’s super subtle. It is interesting to see how artists appropriate or live with the text they deliver.
SR: Do you think that performers who do this kind of intimate work need to prepare or work after the performance to be able to move in and out of that space?
YOU: I think we tend to treat these things in a fairly distanced way. I think there’s an approach of saying, this is what she recorded, this is another person’s account of what they experienced. The job of an interpreter is to represent that, to report it, to share it, to read it, to enter it into the public record. And you do that with, you allow that to come into you on some level. But it’s also very important that on another level you just say it. This is exactly what happened. That’s exactly what this person said. And I think distance is really important, because that’s actually what allows the audience to do their work. I think we often try to leave things a little open-ended.
SR: Visiting the Sophie Calle exhibition at the Walker, I felt a push and pull between heightened emotions and distant irony. I think it’s so interesting that creating distance is also part of your own work.
YOU: It probably has to do with the way in theater, you have to be a little careful about how you evoke emotions or how you deal with emotional or traumatic subjects, because if you go straight to it, it doesn’t It is not necessarily the case that the public will accompany you.
There’s something about the irony, the raised eyebrow or a bit of distance that then opens up the possibility that it might be moving or affecting in some way. You have to be smart if you want to get that kind of impact.
SR: Is this the only piece that Forced Entertainment made entirely from a single text?
TE: There is another one, called “The Notebook”, which is a book by a Hungarian writer called Ágota Kristóf. It is an English translation of a French text. He is also very concerned by quite traumatic cases. We had to put that one together, but it’s a very minimal performance with two people.
There is a third textual project, which uses the works of Shakespeare, but we approach them quite differently.
SR: The other thing I noticed about the “Overshare” exhibition is that Calle has so many games that she puts into her work, and I know that’s something that was also written about it with Forced Entertainment. What do games sort of open up?
TE: Often, in our work, and in that of Sophie Calle too, there is a structural framework or a limit that is imposed on oneself. She will tell the story several times. She’ll ask everyone for a version of the day they suffered the most, or in Forced Entertainment’s “Real Magic,” we’ll just explore this little fragment of an imaginary game show. We will do this many times. And in some way you hope that through this process you will discover something, that you will get to the heart of the matter. Restriction becomes a flowering of new things that become possible. Sophie’s work often gives the impression that she sets a limit for herself, but in reality, the limit is generative. This multiplies the possibilities.
SR: What’s it like doing work in the world right now?
TE: It’s a very divisive time, let’s say, because I feel so much horror on the international stage and in so many political contexts around us, there are so many shifts to the right. You’ll have a new president coming in, and in many places in Europe we’re seeing a similar sort of populist rebound. This is extremely worrying. It makes life very difficult. And I think that as an artist, we also really wonder what we can do, what is the place of work in these fairly fragile situations.
SR: What are you looking forward to next year?
TE: The next thing I’m doing is I’m working with my partner, who is a visual artist Vlatka Horvat – we’re going to do a piece with the ballet in Basel in Switzerland. In mid-January, we left for Basel, and we stayed there for almost three months, working with 17 dancers to create a piece. I’m excited about it.
SR: Have you two ever worked together?
TE: We’ve worked together on various projects and videos and various other things, but this is the first time we’ve really done a big piece together in a dance or theater context. We’re generally more in a mode where we’ll both be sort of invisible troubleshooters for each other’s work. This project is a great opportunity to exploit this in a more complete collaboration.
“forced entertainment”Exquisite pain» will take place on Thursday, January 9, Friday, January 10, and Saturday, January 10 at 7:30 p.m. at the Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Pl., Minneapolis. “Exquisite Pain” is part of Out There 2025: The future of theater, todaywhich runs until February 22.