A line of performers, men and women, dressed as Kings and Queens – cheap red cloaks and cardboard crowns. A story is told, made up live, dragged from memory. It is a long, mutating and endlessly self-cancelling story. A story which somehow, in its many dips and turns, seems to include many, if not all, of the stories in the world...

›And on the Thousandth Night‹ lasts six hours, refreshments are available and the public are free to come and go as they wish.

Widely regarded as »one of the most important performance groups in Europe,« (Der Tagesspiegel), Forced Entertainment makes consistently engaging, challenging and surprising work spanning theatre, durational performance, live art, gallery installation, video and digital media. Led by writer and director Tim Etchells, the themes the company return to are life in cities, identity and sexual politics, the relationship of lived experience to the images of media culture, the nature of language, the attractiveness of chaos and the desire for order, and the need to confess.

Five days of Forced Entertainment at PACT presents three strikingly different and acclaimed performances Exquisite Pain, Bloody Mess, and And on the Thousandth Night… together with a comprehensive fringe programme including film screenings, lectures, photo and media exhibits and after performance discussions with the artists.

Conceived and devised by the company and performed in English

Performers: Forced Entertainment

Direction: Tim Etchells

Design: Richard Lowdon

Lighting Design: Nigel Edwards

›And On The Thousandth Night‹ …was a new work for Festival Ayloul in Beirut in 2000, and draws on one section from Forced Entertainment's epic 24-hour performance Who Can Sing A Song To Unfrighten Me?

Photo: Hugo Glendinning

Forced Entertainment is Robin Arthur, Tim Etchells (artistic director), Richard Lowdon (designer), Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O’Connor.

General Manager: Matt Burman

Administrator: Eileen Evans

Forced Entertainment is regularly funded by Arts Council England and Sheffield City Council.