Seeing the Seeing the Seeing: Understanding the Spectatorship of Forced Entertainment
Keywords:
Forced Entertainment, Live Art, postdramatic theatre, contemporary British experimental theatre, ethics of spectatorship, Spectacular, ShowtimeAbstract
The present paper aims to explore the crucial role of the audience in the artistic strategies of Forced Entertainment, a leading contemporary British experimental theatre troupe. The paper attempts to highlight the shift of the role of audience towards the spectator as a witness, raising thus further ethical issues. Furthermore, the company´s insistence on the presence, realness and “failure” framed by the tools of postdramatic theory and the umbrella of Live Art create a new reading of the endless interplay between the theatre and its audiences, which is illustrated on two recent performances of Forced Entertainment, Showtime (1996) and Spectacular (2008).
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