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Forced Entertainment

Quizoola!
09.22.06
Spectacle — Auditorium Saint-Pierre des Cuisines

Text: Tim Etchells and the company
Set: Richard Lowdon
Lighting: Nigel Edwards

 

Quizoola! is based on a text developed by Tim Etchells on a commission from NRLA and ICA Live Arts in 1996. Forced Entertainment are subsidised by the Arts Council of England. In a narrow circle lit by electric bulbs, two figures made up as clowns square up to each other. Jokily or inquisitorially, whispering or yelling, they play at questioning each other, picking at random from a list of 2,000 questions. Banal, existential, intimate or philosophical, the subjects range from fields of human knowledge to personal secrets. The answers can be true or false, long or short, funny or serious. At regular intervals, the roles are reversed and the interrogator becomes the interrogated, then one of the performers leaves and is replaced. Continued until the actors are exhausted, this game with its apparently simple principle becomes a fascinating piece of theatre. With great virtuosity, and frequently improvising with their quick-fire questions and answers, the players try to catch each other out. Free to come and go as they please, spectators look on with curiosity, amusement or a feeling of unease. Formed in 1984, Forced Entertainment is a group of six artists directed by the director and writer Tim Etchells. Using the multiple forms of theatre, installation, video and the new media, their pieces explore the myths, challenges, dreams and nightmares of urban life today. Since the first performance in 1996, Quizoola! has been put on in New York and Beirut, throughout Europe, and seen in cellars, the changing rooms of an old gymnasium and under a railway bridge.
 

Show devised by the Forced Entertainment company.