Shockingly brilliant - 25 years of theatre company Forced Entertainment

Forced Entertainment photographed in 1984, just after they graduated from Exeter university and formed the company Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/PR

Forced Entertainment's artistic director Tim Etchells and core-member Terry O’Connor on tour in 1988 Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/PR

In The Set-up (1985) three actors performed choreographed gestures and narrative moments from gangland interrogation scenes. The piece drew on TV and film cliches to explore ideas of guilt, confession and sexual identity Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/PR

(Let the Water Run its Course) to the Sea that Made the Promise, 1986, was somewhere between a game, a ritual and an exorcism in which two men and two women enacted fragments in a gibberish language of cries, mumbles and whispers Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/PR

200% & Bloody Thirsty, 1987, featured three drunks enacting the events surrounding the supposed death of one of their friends. Amid a wild party set in a kitsch homemade snow-shaker, canned lager was thrown about and dummies (boiler suits stuffed with foam) were drafted in as extra revellers Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/PR

Some Confusions in the Law about Love, 1989, was set in a tacky nightclub in Birmingham. Cabaret acts included an Elvis impersonator, two jaded showgirls who performed an archaic Japanese love-suicide story and Mike and Dolores, 'sex-act escapologists', who were interviewed 'live by satellite from Hawaii' Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/Forced Entertainment

The performing members of Forced Entertainment, photographed in 1990 Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/PR

Marina & Lee, 1991, followed a woman journeying through a world in which the laws of gravity no longer functioned. The piece included two short sections in which the lights were raised and the performers played a set of confessions directly to the audience. The material later became the starting point for Speak Bitterness (1994) Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/Forced Entertainment

In Emanuelle Enchanted, 1992, a group of five performers whisked a semi-translucent curtain backwards and forwards to reveal the story of a single apocalyptic night. The piece arranged texts, images and space so that new patterns, narratives and meanings emerged Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/Forced Entertainment

In Club of No Regrets, 1993, the central figure, Helen X, ordered a pair of performers to enact scenes inside a tiny set. A second pair of performers played brutal and incompetent stagehands or captors, either facilitating or hindering the performers. The scenes became increasingly violent and chaotic, and talcum powder, fake blood, water and leaves were hurled around the stage Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/Forced Entertainment

The first major site-specific performance by Forced Entertainment, Dreams' Winter, 1994, was designed for and inspired by Manchester's domed Central Library. The audience were seated at desks as the action of the piece continued around them. The central motif of the piece was sleepwalking: the cast of 30, all dressed in pyjamas, walked barefoot through the aisles of books Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/PR

A guided tour of Sheffield, Nights in This City, 1995, took place on board a moving bus. Later restaged in Rotterdam, the project featured interventions by members of the company along the bus route. The performance ended with the entire street index for the city being written in chalk on the floor of a space Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/PR

Quizoola! 1996 was a six-hour performance based on 2,000 questions devised by Tim Etchells. Three actors smeared in clown paint took turns to choose questions and make up answers on stage and the public were invited to arrive, depart and return at any point. Quizoola! has been staged in a series of environments, ranging from cellars and basements to abandoned changing rooms, workshops and railway arches Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/PR

With a soundtrack of old tunes played at 16rpm, Pleasure, 1997, was set in a strange nightclub at 4am. Framed by speech from a cynical MC, the play was about love, hope, modern life, the gods descending to earth and TV dinners. A catalogue of obscene words and phrases was scrawled on a blackboard at the back of the stage (these words were later used in 1998's Filthy Words & Phrases) Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/PR

A wry and comical sex film without action, shot in one continuous seven-hour take, Filthy Words & Phrases, 1998, showed a performer on a journey through fascination, boredom, mild hysteria and near-exhaustion as she listed a catalogue of slang obscenity, sex acts, body parts and bodily functions on a blackboard Photograph: PR

Who Can Sing A Song to Unfrighten Me?, 1999, took place over 24 hours, stretching from midnight to midnight. The focus of the piece was the act of staying up all night, and on performance as a way of marking and sharing time Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/Forced Entertainment

And on the Thousandth Night ... was created in September 2000 for Festival Ayloul in Beirut and draws on one section from the 24-hour performance of the previous year. The public were free to arrive, depart and return at any point as a story was told, made up live, and drawn from the memory of a line of eight performers dressed as kings and queens Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/Forced Entertainment

First Night, 2001, was concerned with the nature of the theatrical event, exploring what happens when it all goes wrong. A line-up of actors addressed the public from the front of the stage – attacking, praising, confusing and provoking those watching Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/Forced Entertainment

Throughout the summer of 2002, members of Forced Entertainment undertook a series of journeys around the UK, each travelling alone to complete tasks such as getting their fortune told, finding locations for an imaginary film or visiting streets chosen simply for their names. In the resulting piece, The Travels, 2002, the actors performed as themselves, the evidence they'd collected Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/Forced Entertainment

Using home movies, letters and videotapes from friends alongside recordings of world events, Instructions for Forgetting, 2003, explored video as a container of memory. A solo performer relayed stories, speculations and letters from friends in different parts of the world in a comical documentary performance Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/Forced Entertainment

Bloody Mess, 2004, marked the culmination of Forced Entertainment's 20 years work in a collision of disconnected characters, stories and performances: a delinquent cheerleader, a sound check, a seductive monologue, a woman in a gorilla suit throwing popcorn ... Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/PR

Based on a project by French conceptual artist Sophie Calle, Exquisite Pain, 2005, explored how people come to terms with trauma Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/PR

The World in Pictures, 2006, was a theatrical history of man from cave to shopping mall, with dodgy costumes, swirling music and over-enthused performances Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/PR

Asked by the Flemish theatre company Victoria to create a performance ‘with children, but for adults', Tim Etchells developed That Night Follows Day, 2007, a show with a cast aged between 8 and 14, who explored the systems that make and shape young people’s experience. It has been performed in cities and festivals from Budapest to Melbourne and Toronto Photograph: Phile Duprez/Forced Entertainment

Spectacular, 2008, was a play about death and playing dead, performed by two people, one of whom donned a skeleton costume. The audience found themselves caught between what they were watching and what they were being told - even to the title, which was deliberately tongue-in-cheek Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/PR

The company's current production, Void Story, is a bleak and comical fable performed as if it were a radio play, with two actors sitting at tables, turning the pages of the script, "doing" the requisite voices and adding in sound effects for gunshots, rain and bad phone-lines. The show is at the Soho theatre, 21–25 April, as part of the Spill festival Photograph: Hugo Glendinning/PR