Forced Entertainment

Forced Entertainment is an experimental theatre company based in Sheffield, England, founded by Tim Etchells in 1984.

Forced Entertainment originally focused on making and touring theatre performances before expanding to long durational performance, live art, video and digital media. Their work has been presented throughout the UK and Europe as well as Australia, Japan, Canada and the USA. They develop projects using a collaborative process - devising work as a group through improvisation, experimentation and debate. Their core members are Tim Etchells (artistic director), Richard Lowdon (designer and performer) and performers Robin Arthur, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O’Connor, who have all been with the company from the start.

A book was published about them in 2004, "Not Even a Game Anymore": The Theatre of Forced Entertainment. In 2012 BBC Radio 4 aired a programme following their creative process developing, writing and rehearsing The Coming Storm.

Joyce McMillan, writing in The Scotsman, called Forced Entertainment "legendary". David Tushingham, writing in the Financial Times, called them "The best group of stage actors in Britain". Robert Avila, writing in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, considered them "internationally successful and storied". Lyn Gardner, writing in The Guardian, has said that "Beyond these shores, however, the company is regarded as one of the greatest British theatrical exports of the past 20 years. ... It is this ability to smash through the pretenses of theatre that has kept the company ahead of the game." They have been described in The Guardian as having "produced some of the most exciting and challenging theatre of the past few decades".Marie-Hélène Falcon, director of Montreal's Festival de Théatre des Amériques, said of Speak Bitterness that "I had never seen anything like it before, a piece that was so political, provocative and poetic because it was a group of artists speaking about their lives - and therefore our lives - in the most direct way," "To this day, Speak Bitterness is one of the very few experiences that have radically changed my understanding and vision of theatre". The British Library claims that the group "continue to tour widely and to great acclaim throughout the world".

Numerous books and journals on theatre have included chapters and essays about Forced Entertainment.

The British Library holds a large collection of video and audio material documenting their performances and talks.