Forced Entertainment: Nights in this City

“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Rome… this city is known to me for three things—the beer, the historical buildings and something else... just there, behind these buildings, on the skyline you might just catch a glimpse of the leaning tower of Pisa... and those of you who've been to Venice before will recognise the smell... Ladies and Gentlemen, I think its fair to warn you that I have been drinking and I've never been that lucky... this city, er yeah, this city, let's call it Berlin, Berlin is known for five things, (1) Steel manufacture, (2) Football, (3) Ray are you sure this is the right route?”

Perhaps the first ever guided tour of Sheffield, Nights in This City was a performance with both audience and performers on board a moving bus. Later restaged in Rotterdam, the project created a guided tour conducted by male and female tour guides who avoided facts in search of a different truth.

Poetical and mischievous, the project explored the different histories written in urban space — from the official and the historical to the personal, the mythical and the imaginary. The public were bused around a particular route whilst commentary from the performers renamed and re-invented real-world events beyond the window. Occasionally, performed interventions by members of the company were staged along the bus route. Slipping through the centre of the city and out of control, the tour ran decidedly off-the-beaten path, playing always to the differences between on-route and off-route, centre and periphery, legitimate and illegitimate.

© Forced Entertainment 1995. Site-specific coach tour and installation. 

Credits:Conceived and devised by the companyPerformers: Robin Arthur, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall,Cathy Naden, Terry O’ConnorDirection: Tim EtchellsText: Tim Etchells and the companyDesign: Richard LowdonLighting Design: Nigel EdwardsSoundtrack: Found Sources

Source: http://www.forcedentertainment.com/page/3069/Nights+in+this+City/121 (retrieved 09/11/2010)

Creative Task:

1. Form groups involving at least one composer.

2. Write a welcoming text (ca. 100 words) for an audience embarking on a hypothetical performance journey through Newton Park and start like this:

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is XXX and I am your guide tonight…”

3. Answer the following questions:

A: Where [on this campus] might be the best place for a spaceship of aliens to land?

B: If you had to say good-bye to a lover where [on this campus] would you most like to do it?

C: If you had killed someone and had to dump the body where would you take it?*

* These questions were used to devise “Nights in this City” © Tim Etchells, Forced Entertainment.

4. Choose one of the locations from the answers given above. Give that location a fictional name. Write a text for your hypothetical guide in which s/he reports of an absurd event that led to an intervention* the audience will see there subsequently.

* An intervention is a short staged performance (music, dance or both combined) or an installation (sound).

5. Map out a route the audience will take (use the Newton Park Campus map provided) and find a title for your hypothetical performance journey.

6. Share your texts, map and title.