The World In Pictures

Created 2006

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This mock-epic theatrical picture-book of the history of man snakes its shambolic and highly comical way from cave to shopping mall, with dodgy costumes, swirling music and over-enthused performances. Somewhere, amid the frequent flurries of fireproofed theatrical snow and the improvised scenery, there’s a bold attempt to tell the Story of Mankind.

Complete with cavemen in bad wigs, Forced Entertainment’s chaotic epic sets the tone with its beginning; a prehistoric ‘volcano dance’ which recreates a scene from the 1960s movie One Million Years BC. Skipping more of its narrative than it can hope to include, The World in Pictures whisks the audience on a mock-grandiose and comical trip from way back then to right here and right now. Somewhere on its wandering road of lewd diversions and noisy digressions, the group’s latest performance finds an eloquence and a pathos that its stumbling beginnings do not hint at.

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Conceived and devised by the company

Performers Robin Arthur, Davis Freeman, Wendy Houstoun, Jerry Killick, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Terry O’Connor, Bruno Roubicek
Direction Tim Etchells
Text Tim Etchells and the company
Design Richard Lowdon
Lighting Design Nigel Edwards
Soundtrack Found sources

The World In Pictures is a Forced Entertainment production

Co-produced by Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz Berlin, Wiener Festwochen Vienna, Les Spectacles Vivants – Centre Pompidou Paris, Productiehuis Rotterdam Rotterdam, Rotterdamse Schouwburg Rotterdam, Kunstencentrum Vooruit Gent, Nuffield Theatre Lancaster, Tramway Glasgow and Warwick Arts Centre Coventry