Preview: Void Story

Do you like your theater "lushly macabre" with an "atmosphere of all-round hopelessness" and "deadpan, truly disturbing and very funny?" These are descriptions of Void Story, a production by the United Kingdom's Forced Entertainment group, who are visiting the Czech Republic for the first time in their 27-year history.

Written and directed by the controversial troupe's artistic director Tim Etchells, Void Story is a bleak and comical contemporary fable following a beleaguered pair of protagonists on a rollercoaster ride through the decimated remains of modern culture, "navigating one terrible cityscape after another," according to the troupe. Etchells' morbid vision incorporates radio plays, animation and live comics, an otherwise empty stage filled with a mash-up of projected images, live dialogue and recorded sound effects.

Void Story was debuted in 2009 as part of SPILL Festival in London and has since toured numerous countries. Later this year, it will return for a tour of the United Kingdom.

An online trailer for the performance, animated in grainy black-and-white collage, depicts a downtrodden duo recounting their ordeal of a day, in which they have lost their home, been run over, shot, banged up in refrigerated transport, plagued by nuisance phone calls and terrorized by ghosts and various wildlife.

Although this brand of brutal wit won't cater to every palate, it has earned Etchells and his Sheffield-based colleagues such commendations as "shockingly brilliant" from The Guardian.  

"Void Story demonstrates our obsession with destroying and then rebuilding elements of performance, as though we were simultaneously denying and confirming the principles of theater," Etchells says.

In addition to the two performances of Void Story at Divadlo Archa, local theater professionals and interested audience members may attend a seminar at which Etchells and company will demonstrate and discuss the principles of their work, something the artistic director brands "devised theater."

Will Noble can be reached at
wnoble@praguepost.com