REAL MAGIC
THEATRE / PERFORMANCE
REAL MAGIC
8 th TO 15th NOV
M/16
Performances and installations by Tim Etchells, Forced Entertainment and guests
Teatro São Luiz & Teatro Maria Matos
Artist of the City 2014 culminates in an 8-day programme of performance, installation, innovation and intrigue presented across two iconic theatres. Intimate encounters collide with epic events celebrating a year of Tim Etchells in Lisbon.
SATURDAY, 8TH NOVEMBER
Tim Etchells presents A BROADCAST/LOOPING PIECES
18:00 – 19:00, Teatro São Luiz / Teatro-Estúdio Mário Viegas
Performed in English
€5
The heart of this mesmerising work is a live remixing of pages from Etchells notebook – a computer document in which, over the years, he has gathered texts of many different kinds. Fragments of overheard conversation, cut-paste quotations direct from newspaper articles and web pages, ideas for performances, rough drafts, and other notes sit side by side in this textual scrapbook. For the performance Etchells selects, intercuts and remixes material from these texts, creating a torrent of language that often loops and repeats on individual lines, editing and re-writing on the fly, creating new dialogues and juxtapositions.
Exploring archive and the processes of writing and gathering, A Broadcast / Looping Pieces is an improvised window on Etchells’ creative process and the extraordinary transformative power of performance itself.
Conceived and performed by Tim Etchells
FORCED ENTERTAINMENT PRESENTES QUIZOOLA LISBOA!
20:00 – 02:00, TEATRO SÃO LUIZ / MAIN ROOM (STAGE)
PERFORMED IN PORTUGUESE
€5
“What is the capital city of Spain? Why are people afraid to die? What is a tree? Was John Wayne really brave? Are you a natural blonde?”
For Quizoola Lisboa! invited guest performers Jorge Andrade, Vera Mantero and Pedro Penim present a special edition of the classic Forced Entertainment durational work of questions and improvised answers, in Portuguese. Over six hours the three actors smeared in clown make-up take turns choosing questions and attempting answers in a performance based on a text of 2000 questions by Tim Etchells. The audience is free to come and go throughout the performance.
Conceived and devised by Forced Entertainment Text Tim Etchells Lighting and Design Richard Lowdon
SUNDAY, 9TH NOVEMBER
Real Magic Sunday Special
16:00 – 22:00, Teatro Maria Matos
Performances, video screenings and installations by Tim Etchells & Matthew Goulish and guests
Performed in English
From Etchells’ video experiments and durational performance work with artist Vlatka Horvat, to his ongoing project Institute of Failure with the American theatre maker and writer Matthew Goulish, to his solo performance task piece ‘Certain Imperatives’ and his brand new collaboration on ‘Erasure’ with experimental violinist Aisha Orazbayeva, Sunday Special is a great chance to explore the connections between video, installation, theatre and performance, and to kick off the Real Magic season in style, see a wide range of Etchells projects in different spaces at Maria Matos.
from 4 pm (continuous to late)
Performances, video screenings and installations by Tim Etchells & Matthew Goulish and guests
various locations
Including:
4 pm
Table Animals, durational performance with Vlatka Horvat
19:30
Institute of Failure – Tim Etchells & Matthew Goulish and guests
Lecture performance
Main Room
€5
21h00-21h45
Erasure – Tim Etchells & Aisha Orazabayeva
Sound/music/voice performance
Main Room
€5
MONDAY AND TUESDAY, 10TH AND 11TH NOVEMBER
Forced Entertainment presents THE NOTEBOOK
21:30, Teatro Maria Matos
Performed in english
12€ / with discount 6€; under 30 years old 5€
A Forced Entertainment performance based on award-winning novel The Notebook (1986), by Hungarian writer Ágota Kristóf. Directed by Tim Etchells, The Notebook tells the story of twin brothers evacuated to the Hungarian countryside during World War II, to stay at their impoverished grandmother’s farm. Understanding the world by a harsh private code, the unnamed narrators are slowly revealed as struggling moralists as Central Europe crumbles into vice, cruelty and opportunism. Kristof’s narrational language – bold, crisp and reduced – provides the basis for a compelling performance.
Based on Le grand cahier by Ágota Kristóf original © Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1986. Translated by Alan Sheridan
Conceived and devised by Forced Entertainment Performers Robin Arthur, Richard Lowdon
Direction Tim Etchells Design Richard Lowdon Lighting Design Jim Harrison Produced by Forced Entertainment Co-produced by PACT Zollverein (Essen); LIFT and 14–18 NOW, WW1 Centenary Art CommissionS A House on Fire co-commission with HAU (Berlin), Kaaitheater (Brussels), Teatro Maria Matos (Lisbon), LIFT and Malta Festival Poznan with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union. Development work generously supported by Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Arts (LICA)
WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY, 12TH AND 13TH NOVEMBER
Forced Entertainment presents VOID STORY
Wednesday 21:00; Thursday 19:30, Teatro São Luiz
Performed in English with portuguese subtitles
14€ / with discounts; under 30 years old 5€
Void Story follows a beleaguered pair of protagonists on a rollercoaster ride through the decimated remains of contemporary culture. Navigating one terrible cityscape after another, lost in wildernesses, backstreets and bewildering funfairs, 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. 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.
Devised by Forced Entertainment Text, Images and Direction Tim Etchells Performers Robin Arthur, Richard Lowdon, Cathy Naden, and Terry O’Connor Design Richard Lowdon Sound & Music John Avery Lighting Nigel Edwards
Void Story is part of the Festival Temps d’Images.
THURSDAY AND FRIDAY, 13TH AND 14TH NOVEMBER
Tim Etchells presents SIGHT IS THE SENSE THAT DYING PEOPLE TEND TO LOSE FIRST Performed by Jim Fletcher
21:30, Teatro Maria Matos
Performed in english
12€ / With discount 6€; under 30 years old 5€
“Socks are gloves for the feet. Snow is cold. Water is the same thing as ice. In America things are bigger. America is a country…”
Sight is the Sense that Dying People Tend to Lose First is a long free-associating monologue that tumbles from topic to topic to create a vast, failing iteration and explanation of the world. Comical in its apparent naivety and preposterously encyclopaedic in scope Sight is the Sense… is performed by the extraordinary New York actor Jim Fletcher, best known for his work with Richard Maxwell and explores the absurdity and horror of consciousness as it tries and fails to seize and define everything that it encounters.
Produced by Forced Entertainment Text and Direction Tim Etchells Performer Jim Fletcher
Assistant Director Pascale Petralia Lighting Design Nigel Edwards
SATURDAY, 15TH NOVEMBER
Forced Entertainment presents FIRST NIGHT
21:00, Teatro São Luiz
Performed in English
14€ / with discounts ; under 30 years old 5€
In a kind of disastrous vaudeville, eight performers stand before us in a line of dazzling smiles, dead eyes, sequined lycra, tottering heels and loud check suits. Beginning with a grand welcome, First Night soon disintegrates into a variety night where the acts always seem to end in either insult or injury and the darkness offstage is no longer safe. Somewhere, somehow, the night has come comically, horribly and totally unstuck.
Revived specially for the Lisbon Artist of the City Programme Forced Entertainment’s seminal 2001 performance First Night is a playful and dark exploration of the nature of the theatrical event itself and what happens when it all goes wrong.
Conceived and devised by Forced Entertainment Performers Robin Arthur, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden, Ben Neale, Terry O’Connor, Bruno Roubicek, John Rowley Direction Tim Etchells Text Tim Etchells and the company Design Richard Lowdon Lighting Design Nigel Edwards Soundtrack Found sources