Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare
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 all of the Shakespeare plays, 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.
Tim Etchells writes in Nachtkritik about Complete Works and live streaming
An interview with Richard Lowdon by Rebecca Jacobson in Ex-Berliner Magazine
An interview with Tim Etchells by Andrew Haydon in the Guardian
Lyn Gardner: 'Words, words, words: are we too in thrall to Shakespeare's language?'
'Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide': Tim Etchells in Exeunt Magazine on Complete Works
Director Tim Etchells
Devised and performed by Robin Arthur, Jerry Killick, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O'Connor
Text Robin Arthur, Tim Etchells, Jerry Killick, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O'Connor
Design Richard Lowdon
Sound & Lighting Design Jim Harrison
Production Management Jim Harrison
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
Thanks to the Royal Shakespeare Company which commissioned Be Stone No More by Tim Etchells in 2012 for the World Shakespeare Festival – an early, development version of this project, as well as to the people who participated in that phase of the work
Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare - PREVIOUS SHOWS
Festival d'Automne, Paris, France
La Bâtie - Festival de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland
9 Sep 2021 - 18 Sep 2021
Kunstfestspiele Hannover, Germany
Frascati, Amsterdam, Netherlands
30 Mar 2019 - 7 Apr 2019
Teaterhuset Avant Garden, Trondheim, Norway
7 Feb 2019 - 16 Feb 2019
SPILL Festival of Performance, (Ipswich) Ipswich, UK
11 Oct 2018 - 20 Oct 2018
NYU Skirball, New York, USA
11 Sep 2018 - 16 Sep 2018
Zürcher Theater Spektakel, Zurich, Switzerland
16 Aug 2018 - 24 Aug 2018
Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt, Germany
BIT teatergarasjen, Bergen, Norway
Kanuti Gildi, Püha Vaimu SAAL Tallinn, Estonia
Athens and Epidaurus Festival, Athens, Greece
1 Jun 2017 - 9 Jun 2017
Teatre Lliure, Barcelona, Spain
4 Apr 2017 - 9 Apr 2017
Campo, Gent, Belgium
Kaaitheater, Brussels, Belgium
7 Mar 2017 - 12 Mar 2017
Centre for the Art of Performance, UCLA, Los Angeles, USA
Romaeuropa, Italy
Theaterfestival Basel, Basel, Switzerland
1 Sep 2016 - 9 Sep 2016
Festiwal Szekspirowski, Gdansk, Poland
30 Jul 2016 - 7 Aug 2016
Barbican Centre, London, England
1 Mar 2016 - 6 Mar 2016
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, USA
Berliner Festspiele, Berlin, Germany
25 Jun 2015 - 4 Jul 2015
Time out London: Forced Entertainment Take on Shakespeare
Tim Etchells Talks to Shakspeare Magazine
Exeunt Magazine Live-written Responses to 'Complete Works'
A Note on Forced Entertainment's 'Complete Works' – Tim Etchells