Drawing on his experience as a director and writer with the world-renowned performance group Forced Entertainment Tim Etchells considers the processes at work in devising performance. Etchells account is self-conscioucsly a performance in and of itself - exposing the contingencies of it's own making, revealing it's own errors and strategies, footnoting its progress with digressions, mixing anecdote with more objective or analytic material. Dividing the work into distinct but overlapping stages Etchells specifically discusses the role of improvisation, the role of group-discussion and negotiation and the importance of sequencing, structuring and framing material. Etchells touches on his on-going photographic collaboration with Hugo Glendinning “Empty Stages” as well as on the creation of Forced Entertainment performances Bloody Mess, The World in Pictures, Dirty Work (amongst others).