UK-based theatre company Forced Entertainment has been working collaboratively for 30+ years. Their website is a great and comprehensive resource: learn more about the company’s process, their history, and this show.
Read more about the work from Forced Entertainment artistic director Tim Etchells:
Wondering now about how these simple rule-based performance pieces are so hard to describe. I guess it’s something about the balance between the explicit rules and the ones which are more implicit/unspoken; ‘rules’ created in fact by having a shared sensibility and frame of references. I guess this kind of shared knowledge is really important to a work like And on the Thousandth Night…
And get up to speed on the source inspiration: The Thousand and One Nights.
King Shahryar, after discovering that during his absences his wife has been regularly unfaithful, kills her and those with whom she has betrayed him. Then, loathing all womankind, he marries and kills a new wife each day until no more candidates can be found. His vizier, however, has two daughters, Shahrazad (Scheherazade) and Dunyazad; and the elder, Shahrazad, having devised a scheme to save herself and others, insists that her father give her in marriage to the king. Each evening she tells a story, leaving it incomplete and promising to finish it the following night. The stories are so entertaining, and the king so eager to hear the end, that he puts off her execution from day to day and finally abandons his cruel plan.