Dirty Work (The Late Shift) at Theatre Deli
Kristy Stott, Theatre Editor
Based in Sheffield, Forced Entertainment have been making ground-breaking experimental work together since 1984. Devising performances that excite, challenge, question and explode their audience’s expectations, Forced Entertainment have earned international acclaim, and a reputation as one of Britain’s leading companies in theatre.
Led by the artist and writer Tim Etchells, Forced Entertainment have an impressively ground-breaking and provocative portfolio of performance. The company has toured across the UK, Europe, and the rest of the world and are recognised as world leaders in contemporary performance practice. Contributing enormously to the growth and development of British theatre, the debate about the form itself, as well as influencing several generations of younger artists who have been inspired by the work, the group were awarded the prestigious International Ibsen Award in 2016.
Dirty Work (The Late Shift) has been developed from Forced Entertainment’s 1998 performance Dirty Work. In revisiting their 1998 original performance of Dirty Work, Forced Entertainment have created a new version of the piece that digs deeper into the comical and unsettling territory they established just before the turn of the Millennium. The new work, Dirty Work (The Late Shift) develops the simple but immensely generative form of described or virtual events, co-opting the imaginative capacities of the audience to fill the stage with a delirium of images, scenes and events in bewildering and unnerving succession.
From theatrical spectacle to historical events, daily life to impossible feats, cabaret to political speeches, and from sublime beauty to vivid terrors, everything is here, in provocative, intimate and comical style. Accompanied by the sound of piano on a battered record player, Dirty Work (The Late Shift) explores and examines the ethics of entertainment.
Dirty Work (The Late Shift) is 80 minutes of performative innovation and as with most of Forced Entertainment’s work, it requires collaboration with the audience. If you choose to accept, you will be gratefully rewarded.
