How Goes The World, Sir, Now? - Histoire(s) du Théâtre V

✔ English & Dutch spoken  ✔ Surtitles in Dutch & English

✔ Engels & Nederlands gesproken  ✔ Boventitels in Nederlands & Engels

THE PERFORMANCE

After Milo Rau, Faustin Linyekula, Angélica Liddell and Miet Warlop, Tim Etchells creates a new episode – the fifth – of the acclaimed NTGent series Histoire(s) du Théâtre.

Remembered performances. Remembered scenes. Remembered agonies. Remembered joys. Remembered costumes. Remembered narratives. The sound of breathing and sighs in the half-light. Facing the audience, this audience here, and another audience – the dead and the living inexplicably combined. The blurring of the real and the unreal, the past and the present, the stage and the auditorium, the actors and the spectators accumulated over years. The space is restless, haunted, uneasy. There is music from another room or another world. Voices whisper. The eyes in the darkness stare back. Watching and being watched.

How Goes The World, Sir, Now?, Tim Etchells’s contribution to the series Histoire(s) du Théâtre, is based on a quotation from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The performance summons the history of theatre as a restless, uneasy and absurd orgy – breathing, whispering, yelling, watching and remembering in darkness – as the world beyond the stage vibrates in a state of perpetual and present uncertainty.

I was a murderer; I sat at a table.
I came on before the King and marched right to the middle, there was someone beside me, dressed just the same.
I cried, all the time.
I was a young student, idealistic, eyes burning with fervour. I raised my voice. I shouted about all kinds of things. The problem with this, the problem with that, and then later how sorry I was.
People couldn't take their eyes off me.
People didn’t notice me.
A few people noticed me.
I was a messenger.
I was a soldier.
I was a whore.
I was a prince.
I was a cook, the pots and pans were empty.
I was dying; I was covered in what looked like blood.
I died of old age.
I was in a big crowd of people at the tavern, I was in the background with the others, we had to speak but not using words, just making sounds and gesticulating animatedly.

Since being invited to work on a project for NTGent’s Histoire(s) du Théâtre series, I’ve fallen into a space of feverish remembering. Old shows are coming back to haunt me again, their scenes and images disorganised, scrambled, reordered, remade in new and unexpected forms. In the mix are shows I’ve seen, shows I’ve made, shows I’ve been in, shows I’ve had described to me, shows I’ve written, shows I’ve read about, shows I’ve dreamt of and never seen, shows from long long years back, shows from just a week or two ago.

I’ve spent almost 40 years creating theatre performances, largely with the Sheffieldbased ensemble Forced Entertainment, and, in the weeks following the invitation from NTGent, I’ve realised anew that all of it has been a present reflection on the history of the form. Thinking about it now, it’s as if each performance, in one way or another, might be understood as an attempt by its makers to locate themselves in the strange lineage and development of theatrical practice. An action, a narration and a form of orientation. As if every drama were an essay on the facts, the possibilities and impossibilities of drama, every staging a reflection on the inherited, absurd alchemical processes of staging itself

I’m aware of my body ‘ghosted’ by the roles it has played, by the fictional narratives and imaginary situations it has been in, by actions of others that have passed through it, as well as by the repertoire of bodily and mental states I have built up as a spectator: the rhythms and postures of attention, the expression of sighs, slumps and leanings forward to pay attention, the small acts of negotiation with others – a touch or clasp of the hand, a brush of the knee, an exchange of critical or confirming glances in a dubious or devastating scene.

Writing this I am not yet sure of the form my Histoire(s) du Théâtre will take but I know that I will need it to make sense of this fever dream of remembrance. What strikes me now also is that so many of the details I am thinking about are peripheral in some way to the theatre, rather than central. In truth, I’ve long been obsessed with the edges of the scene, with the parts of the picture typically ignored. Crowd scenes. Choruses. Walk-ons. Background figures. ‘Unimportant’ or ‘unremarkable’ characters or presences. As if one might approach the history of the form not through its major dramatic characters but through its supposedly minor ones; its more-or-less forgotten army of butlers, servants, messengers, murderers, drunken mobs, ladies-in-waiting, courtiers, doctors, animals, innkeepers, confidantes, onlookers and overhearers. Or as if one might approach the history of the form through its background workers in the form of stagehands and scenery shifters, technicians, make-up artists and wardrobe assistants.

I guess for me theatre has always resided in this complex layered mode. It’s a place of actions and texts, narrative and stories, scenes and fragments, questions and dialogues, what-ifs and proclamations. At the same time, it’s also a place of work. Of labour. Of collective human effort of different kinds set in motion to make something happen.

GENERAL INFORMATION

Premiere 16th of November 2023 Tour Seasons 23-24 & 24-25 Venues Big- and middle sized

BIOGRAPHY

Tim Etchells is a visual artist, theatre maker and writer based in the United Kingdom. He has worked in a wide variety of contexts, notably as leader of the world-renowned performance group Forced Entertainment. His work includes performance, video, photography, text projects, installation and fiction. He is currently artistic director of Forced Entertainment and Professor of Performance & Writing at the University of Lancaster.

“I have created a body of work exploring contradictory aspects of language in playful and poetic ways. I’m drawn both to the speed, clarity and vividness with which language communicates narrative, image and ideas, and at the same time to its amazing propensity to create a rich field of uncertainty and ambiguity.”

“British theatre company Forced Entertainment has produced some of the most exciting and challenging theatre of the past few decades”, wrote the guardian. The core of Forced Entertainment is formed by a group of six artists; Tim Etchells (artistic director), Robin Arthur, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O'Connor have been working together to create original theatre and performances since 1984. In 2024 Forced Entertainment celebrates its 40th anniversary.

The first performance by Forced Entertainment was Jessica in the Room of Lights in 1984. Using dialogue, taped voiceover, soundtrack and choreographed action, Jessica in the Room of Lights explores a blurred storyline about a cinema usherette whose real life becomes mixed with films she’s absorbed at work. Quizoola! (1996), a special improvised performance in which the performers constantly ask and answer questions. The performance could last 6 to 24 hours. In 2015, Forced Entertainment had great success with Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare, in which it used household objects to perform Shakespeare's entire oeuvre. Out Of Order (2018) is a reflection on the messy world we live in, where we make up for what we lack in meaningful dialogue with unfiltered aggression. “Forced entertainment’s deconstructed clowning routine is a challenging absurdist response to troubled times”, The Stage wrote about Out Of Order (****). Under Etchells’ direction Forced Entertainment won the International Ibsen Prize 2016.

In recognition of his writing for and about contemporary performance, Etchells was awarded an honorary doctorate by Dartington College of Arts. He was Thinker in Residence (2009-2010) at Tate Research and the Live Art Development Agency in London, and Visiting Honorary Professor at the Roehampton University School of Arts (2010-2012), and Professor of Performance at Sheffield University (2011-2012). Since January 2013 Etchells has been Professor of Performance & Writing at the University of Lancaster. Etchells was Artist of the City of Lisbon (2014) and won the Spalding Gray Award in 2016. He won the Manchester Fiction Prize in 2019

TIM ETCHELLS' WORK

And On The Thousandth Night... - Tim Etchells / Forced Entertainment (2000)

A story is told, made up live, dragged from memory by a line of eight performers dressed as Kings and Queens, wearing cheap red cloaks and cardboard crowns. It is a long, mutating and endlessly self-cancelling story. It is a story which somehow, in its many dips and turns, seems to include many — if not all — of the stories in the world. Moving from the extraordinary to the banal, it mixes everything from film plots, religious stories, children’s stories, traditional tales, jokes and modern myths, to scary stories, love stories and sex stories.

Qu'y a-t-il entre nous? - Tim Etchells (2021)

Best of all - Tim Etchells (2018)

Who Knows - Tim Etchells (2014)