Created in 1995, Nights in this City is a site-specific performance based in Sheffield and created by Sheffield based company – Forced Entertainment.
The piece allows the audience to sit on a coach and take a tour round the city being talked to by a male and female guide.
“How long do you have to have lived somewhere until you’re allowed to lie about it.” (Etchells 1996: 51)
Both the performers gave false information to the audience in order to make the audience imagine the potential of the space rather than seeing it for what it is. They use the history of the destination to invite the audience to believe them and influence their work, for example: “All of the streets round here got names from famous football hooligans from history and all of the buildings got names from ghosts, cleaning products and convicted curb-crawlers.” (quoted in Kaye, 2013).
Both for the performers and the audience members the scenery was constantly changing, therefore each new site that was visited was both new to the audience and to the performers therefore no two sites were the same.
The performance of this piece was ‘in the moment’ and is an immersive piece.
At the end of the bus journey the audience got off the bus and viewed an installation of the city street index on the ground. Here the audience could see where they live and work and are invited to become apart of the performance by introducing their own stories and identifying with the work.
