Forced Entertainment: End Meeting For All
Kristy Stott, Theatre Editor
Created in April during the Coronavirus lockdown, Forced Entertainment’s End Meeting For All is a fragmentary online work in three short episodes.
Each episode runs for 25 minutes and has been recorded in a single live take across six screens of a Zoom meeting with the performers improvising, reacting and interacting from distant locations in Sheffield, London and Berlin. These completed episodes are now available to view on YouTube.
We’ve all become more familiar with Zoom during the lockdown…and whether you love or hate the video conferencing platform, End Meeting For All is probably the most entertaining Zoom call you will have during the pandemic. The grid of screens lends itself perfectly to this perceptive and comically unsettling performance. Brilliantly reflective of current times, the performers are plagued by technical difficulties and artistic misunderstandings.
Excavating comic chaos from complete isolation despair – Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden, Terry O’Connor, Robin Arthur, Richard Lowdon and Tim Etchells – are stuck in a world where the lockdown appears to have been going on for a very very very very long time. Cue bad wigs, skeletons, fake tears, frozen screens, smeared make-up, interruptions by dogs…and lots of gin.
Forced Entertainment have been at the forefront of new developments in theatre and performance for 35 years, and are renowned internationally for pushing the boundaries of contemporary theatre, this project sees the company turn their eye for collage, fragmented narrative and innovation towards video. Multi-layered improvisation, gradual repetitions and breakdowns all provide a reflection on the strange state of lockdown, and the wider anxieties that have surfaced during the pandemic.
Bringing absurd wit and brilliant humour, despite each performers’ infinite state of isolation, End Meeting For All is compelling viewing. If only all Zoom meetings were this entertaining…
Looking for more unmissable culture during the lockdown? Be sure to check out our guide to the top online things to do in Manchester and the North.
