If All Else Fails

Forced Entertainment

Forced Entertainment is an ensemble of six artists founded in 1984 and based in Sheffield. Touring and presenting their ground-breaking provocative performances across the UK, mainland Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and further afield, the group have sustained a unique collaborative practise for almost forty years. Led by the artist and writer Tim Etchells, the Forced Entertainment company includes designer and performer Richard Lowdon alongside performers Robin Arthur, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O’Connor. The group are committed to collective practice, involving and inviting national and international artists to work with us to challenge, develop and reinvent the theatre we make. Forced Entertainment’s work explores and often explodes the conventions of genre, narrative and theatre itself drawing influence not just from drama but from dance, performance art, music culture and popular forms such as cabaret and stand-up. The group operate at different scales, shifting from intimate two-performer works focused on text, to spectacular productions with large numbers of people onstage. Exciting, challenging, entertaining and questioning, Forced Entertainment has influenced the ecology and experience of theatre in the UK and beyond and been key players in of the development of a truly contemporary theatre language, inspiring generations of UK and international theatre makers.

Seke Chimutengwende

Seke Chimutengwende is a choreographer, performer, movement director and teacher; he has performed for numerous dance companies including DV8 Physical Theatre and Lost Dog. He is currently working as a performer with Forced Entertainment and Sue MacLaine Company. Seke has also been practicing completely improvised performance, using movement and text, since 2006. He has performed over 70 solo improvisations internationally and has performed ensemble improvisation with numerous dancers, actors and musicians. His recent choreographies include Black Holes, a collaboration with Alexandrina Hemsley, (British Council’s Edinburgh Showcase, 2019), the solo Plastic Soul (The Yard Theatre, 2019), and Detective Work, a duet with Stephanie McMann (commissioned by NEUROLIVE 2021). Seke is currently making It begins in darkness, which will premiere in September 2022, a group choreography looking at ghosts and haunted houses as metaphors for how histories of slavery and colonialism haunt the present. He will also be making a new group work for Candoco Dance Company in 2022. Seke regularly teaches improvisation at The Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance, London Contemporary Dance School, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and Goldsmiths, University of London, among others. Seke studied dance at Lewisham College from 1999 to 2001, and London Contemporary Dance School from 2001 to 2004, and went on to train extensively in improvisation with a variety of practitioners and with Andrew Morrish in particular.

Tyrone Huggins

Tyrone Huggins has over 40 years’ experience as actor and performer. He was co-founder of the experimental, visual theatre company Impact Theatre Co-operative in 1979, touring nationally and internationally in thirteen devised productions over five years before working with other companies including Temba, People Show, Hesitate & Demonstrate, Talawa, Paines Plough and Graeme Miller Company. He has predominantly performed in new writing. Recent acting credits include Black Men Walking by Testament for Eclipse Theatre (with Royal Exchange/Royal Court); Always Orange by Fraser Grace and Fall of the Kingdom, Rise of the Foot Soldier by Somalia Seaton for RSC; Opening Skinner’s Box devised for Improbable (with Northern Stage/West Yorkshire Playhouse); The Honey Man by Tyrone Huggins for Judy Owen Ltd. (with Birmingham Repertory Theatre).