Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare

Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare     
Presented in English   
Touring 2016

Forced Entertainment

Performances Include:

February 25-27, 2016 (In-Complete Works)
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA

March 1-6, 2016
Barbican, London, England

July 30-August 7, 2016
as part of the International Shakespeare Festival in Gdansk, Poland

September 1-9, 2016
as part of the Theatrefestival Basel, Switzerland

October 8-16, 2016
as part of the Romaeuropa Fesitval 2016, Italy

December 6-11, 2016
Center for Art of Performance UCLA, Los Angeles, USA

Director: Tim Etchells
Text: Robin Arthur, Tim Etchells, Jerry Killick, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden, Terry O’Connor
Design: Richard Lowdon
Sound & Lighting Design: Jim Harrison
Production Management: Jim Harrison

Cast:
Robin Arthur, Jerry Killick, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O’Connor

“A salt and pepper pot for the king and queen. A vase for the prince. A matchbox for the servant. A toilet roll tube for the Innkeeper. A water bottle for the messenger.

In Complete Works six performers create condensed versions of each and every Shakespeare play, comically and intimately retelling them, using a collection of everyday objects as stand-ins for the characters on the one-metre stage of an ordinary table top.

Forced Entertainment have long had an obsession with virtual or described performance, exploring in different ways over the years the possibilities of conjuring extraordinary scenes, images and stories using language alone. In a brand new direction for the group, Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare explores the dynamic force of narrative in relation to Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, histories and late plays. What follows is simple and idiosyncratic, absurd and strangely compelling as, through a kind of lo-fi, home-made puppetry, the stories of the plays really do come to life in vivid miniature.

Forced Entertainment’s Complete Works is the first time they’ve approached dramatic literature and the Shakespearean legacy. The result is a kind of levelling of the plays – a gently comic re-casting of them via objects from the kitchen cabinet and grocery store shelves – as well as a celebration of their power as stories, and the act of storytelling and theatre itself."               

For More Information:
http://www.forcedentertainment.com/project/complete-works-table-top-shakespeare/

http://festiwalszekspirowski.pl/en/home-2/programme/coriolanus-en/                            

Selected Reviews:
Review by our Researcher, Rowena Hawkins: http://playstosee.com/table-top-shakespeare/

Funding and Sponsorship:

Complete Works is a Forced Entertainment production. Co-produced by Berliner Festspiele – Foreign Affairs Festival Berlin and Theaterfestival Basel. Touring of the Complete Works project in 2016 is kindly supported by the British Council.