from the original Festival website:

Void Story follows a beleaguered pair of protagonists on a roller-coaster ride through the decimated remains of contemporary culture. Navigating one terrible cityscape after another, mugged, shot at and bitten by insects, pursued through subterranean tunnel systems, stowed away in refrigerated transport, shacked up in haunted hotels and lost in wildernesses, backstreets and bewildering fun fairs, they travel to the centre of a night so intense that there are no stars to be seen.

Forced Entertainment perform the bleak and comical contemporary fable of Void Story as if it were a radio play, sitting at tables, turning the pages of the script, ‘doing’ the requisite voices and adding in sound effects for gunshots, rain and bad phone-lines.  Simultaneously the otherwise empty stage is dominated by a series of projected images, a storyboard for an impossible movie-version of Tim Etchells’ uniquely unsettling text. Somewhere between the live dialogue, the recorded sound effects and the collaged images attempting to visualise the narrative, is where Void Story actually takes place.

2009 marks Forced Entertainment’s 25th anniversary. Since forming the company on graduation from Exeter University in 1984, the six core members of the group have sustained a unique artistic partnership for a quarter of a century, confirming time and again their position as trailblazers in contemporary performance. The company’s substantial canon of work reflects an interest in the mechanics of performance, the role of the audience and the machinations of contemporary urban life.  The work – framed and focused by Artistic Director Tim Etchells – is distinctive and provocative, delighting in disrupting the conventions of theatre and the expectations of audiences. Forced Entertainment’s trademark collaborative process – devising work as a group through improvisation, experimentation and debate – has made them pioneers of British avant-garde theatre and earned them an unparalleled international reputation.

Production, Ray Rennie and Elb Hall.

Forced Entertainment is regularly funded by Arts Council England and Sheffield City Council.  Void Story was made with the support of Tanzquartier, Vienna and Tate Media.

forcedentertainment.com