If All Else Fails

Created 2023

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Two performers engage in an absurd test that seems to shift and change as they work their way through it. Fragments of a language lesson. Questions from a personality quiz. Slogans from some future society. The performers laugh, hesitate, ask for more time. The test continues. As the clock ticks it’s not even certain if the subjects of the test are the audience or the performers.

Comical and tangled If All Else Fails is a new collaboration with dancer/maker/choreographer Seke Chimutengwende. Performed by Chimutengwende and Cathy Naden, one of the founder members of the group, the piece is a dialogue of speech and movement, questions and answers.

Drawing on the artists’ mutual interest in improvisation, and in setting up complex, comical and unstable performance situations, the piece brings together two powerful forces in the contemporary theatre scene to create a perplexing and original exploration of new territory.

Video

REACTIONS

Cruel, comical game of repetition and reversal from Forced Entertainment

The Stage ****

credits

Conceived and devised by the company
Director Tim Etchells
Dramaturgy Tyrone Huggins
Devised and Performed by Seke Chimutengwende & Cathy Naden
Lighting Design Jim Harrison
Production Management Jim Harrison

If All Else Fails is a Forced Entertainment production.
Co-produced by Cambridge Junction & Sheffield Theatres.