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Duke Predicted to Drop Another Game This Week vs Virginia
The last two weeks have been tough on the Duke Blue Devils.
Connor Hellebuyck traded to Devils, ending dramatic Jets saga
The Devils acquired Connor Hellebuyck in a blockbuster trade with the Jets. Here are the full details of the deal.
Connor Hellebuyck trade saga finally ends as Jets ship goaltender to Devils
Hellebuyck and the Devils will face the Jets in Winnipeg on Nov. 10.
Connor Hellebuyck Traded By Winnipeg Jets in Blockbuster Deal
Connor Hellebuyck has reportedly been traded from the Winnipeg Jets to the New Jersey Devils, ending months of uncertainty surrounding the superstar goalie.
Duke's Cameron Boozer Struggles in NBA Debut With Grizzlies
Former Duke Blue Devils star Cameron Boozer didn't have a strong NBA debut.
Carrie-Anne Moss won’t return for ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ season 3 (exclusive)
Carrie-Anne Moss says Marvel didn’t invite her back for ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ season 3, but she is reuniting with ‘Jessica Jones’ star Krysten Ritter on a new project.
Carrie-Anne Moss wasn’t invited back for “Daredevil: Born Again” but she’s reuniting with Krysten Ritter (exclusive)
“We have a million ideas.”
Duke Blows Past Tennessee in Exhibition Game
The Duke Blue Devils beat Tennessee easily in their latest exhibition game.
Duke Dominates First Half against #8 Tennessee
Duke at half is currently up 54-30 against #8 Tennessee. They dominated the first half from start to finish, including a 15-0 run after it was tied 2-2. The Blue Devils have looked like the much better team. Tennessee attempted a run late in the half but couldn’t get closer than 20 points. If the […] The post Duke Dominates First Half against #8 Tennessee appeared first on HEAVY.
Cristiano Ronaldo ‘let Man Utd down’ with lack of effort
Cristiano Ronaldo “didn’t prepare himself” properly during his second stint at Man Utd and the club was “not the highest priority” for him, according to Erik ten Hag. The former Red Devils b...
Tom Fontana Boards Vatican Series Based on 'Devil's Business' Book
"Oz" creator Tom Fontana is set to create and showrun a new Vatican drama series based on Emanuele Midolo’s forthcoming novel "The Devil's Business."
‘Oz’ Creator Tom Fontana to Showrun Vatican Drama Series Based on ‘The Devil’s Business’ Book as Fabel Entertainment Scores Rights (EXCLUSIVE)
“Oz” creator Tom Fontana is set to create and showrun a new Vatican drama series based on Emanuele Midolo’s forthcoming novel “The Devil’s Business” after Fabel Entertainment scored book rights. “The ...
Tom Fontana Boards Vatican Series Based on 'Devil's Business' Book
"Oz" creator Tom Fontana is set to create and showrun a new Vatican drama series based on Emanuele Midolo’s forthcoming novel "The Devil's Business."
Streaming’s Biggest Show Returns…and a Buzzy Genre Struggles
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) Obviously, the big news of the week (if not month) is Netflix letting go of executive Bela Bajaria, their chief content officer. I’m going to cover this in my next “Most Important Story of the Week”, but I also have a data angle that I might publish before then. (Too much news this month, am I right?) But first, I have a bonus Streaming Ratings Report issue for you. Today’s article is a bit of a grab bag of topics I’ve wanted to write about, but couldn’t squeeze into the (already very long) Streaming Ratings Report issues. The NFL drives huge viewership numbers, so I’ve got a look at that. A whole bunch of TV shows returned to the traditional broadcast channels, and I have thoughts. And I have a quick look at adult animated shows, since a couple flopped earlier this month. Plus, the Emmys aired earlier this month, and we got some fun data bout how popular those nominated shows are and why I’m not optimistic about the show’s future. That’s a lot, so let’s dive right in. Subscribe Sports - Football Remains the King of Streaming Over the last two Streaming Ratings Reports, I sorta ignored the biggest “show” each week. (I was tempted to say “piece of content” but I know that word bugs folks.) In my database, I call these “specials”, and they sure are special. I speak of the king of American TV: football!!! Streaming football is back and, unlike some other sports, it routinely dominates all viewership. Probably the best way to show this is to update one of my favorite graphics, the “40 Million Hour Club”1 since football games have joined that club each week they’ve premiered: (Yep, that’s the data through 28-Sep, the first four weeks of the season. As a reminder, I take the average minute audience provided by Nielsen, factor out a percentage of linear TV viewers in home markets, and multiply the run time by the three-hour runtime.) Again, the numbers are huge. Let’s start with Netflix. They grabbed the rights to the bonus opening week NFL Kickoff game (which was on YouTube last year) and it put up 18.5 million viewers on average. That nets out to 47.4 million hours of estimated streaming hours. That’s good! Though, notably, it’s well below Christmas Day games from previous years. Compared to other streamers/broadcasters, that’s a bit of a mixed result. On one hand, Netflix’s 18.5 million average is about what YouTube claimed last year, though Nielsen used a bespoke methodology at that time, so I trust this viewership figure more. So that’s good. (The game also shifted from a Friday to a Thursday and that could have helped the viewership as well.) And Netflix continues to best Prime Video in total viewership—as you’ll see next—though Netflix has had much higher-profile (opening week and Christmas Day) games. NBC/Peacock’s opening game the night before averaged 25.1 million average viewers, which is just much bigger than Netflix (or Prime Video). That’s the big caveat to all streaming viewership records: even in success, they can’t compete with traditional linear TV. Previously, I called this my “hierarchy of viewership”, and the data keeps supporting that thesis. The downside for NBC is that this game’s viewership was down compared to previous years, though it may be a counting issue. Here’s a great chart from Sports Media Watch: Indeed, looking at all the opening week games across all windows, Netflix still lags the other primetime windows, but does well compared to the afternoon games: I saw a few folks make the case that streamers still lag traditional broadcasters in reach, and I’d add they really lag compared to “broadcast plus streaming” options like NBC/Peacock, ESPN/Disney+ and CBS/Paramount+. The best data I saw for this came from Samba TV, who charted reach through the 2025 season, and, wow. (Samba TV’s numbers are historically lower than Nielsen’s, so don’t compare their household figures to Nielsen’s hours, but use them as a proxy for the relative reach of the streamers.) The good news is Prime Video is NOT having a down year. Their opening Thursday Night Football game reached 18.6 million viewers (about what Netflix got), but that’s a high for Prime Video on Thursdays and the biggest Thursday night game since 2015. The TNF games the weeks of 21-Sep and 28-Sep continued this streak, getting 43.1 (16.8 million average viewers) and 42.5 total hours (16.6 million average viewers), which were both up from last year. Still, that continues the (typical) season slide: (For those new-to-streaming-football-numbers folks, the viewership declines for Thursday Night Football as the year goes along.) Overall, it appears as if Prime Video is now part of the “football habit”, be it for customers at home or out at places like bars and restaurants. And its viewership is slowly catching up to broadcast. One last chart shows this. Last season, Nielsen started adding out-of-home viewership to the charts, so I try not to do season-to-season comparisons as I did for the first few years. And while Nielsen added Big Data viewing this year, I’m going to compare the last two seasons. Here’s that chart, which shows the season-over-season gains: When it comes to streaming football, we have to keep a few seemingly contradictory thoughts in our head… First, streaming doesn’t come close to matching broadcast’s reach and, thus, viewership. Second, even with that gap, football is still the biggest “thing” on streaming. It’s very, very popular. Third, while some methodology changes have likely helped Prime Video’s numbers, their viewership does appear to be growing. Lastly, yeah, the NFL started the season off poorly, with week one dragging down the numbers in year-over-year comparisons. However—and again, methodology changes may have helped this—the viewership grew compared to previous seasons over the next couple of weeks. So football is still king. On streaming and off. Television - Adult Animation Continues to NOT Make the Streaming Charts In the last two reports, two adult-animated shows whiffed: Netflix’s animated comedy, Dang! Paramount+’s Sega-video-game-inspired fantasy/comedy, Golden Axe. Neither made the charts, but that’s usually the case for animated shows. I mean, here’s literally every animated show that’s made the Nielsen Original charts since the start of 2025: And one of those shows is G_abby’s Dollhouse_! A kids show! The problem with charts like this is that they don’t give you a sense of how many shows miss the charts. Netflix had at least eleven animated flops, including comedies like Big Mouth (a show everyone assumed was popular in the pre-Streaming Ratings Era), Long Story Short, Haunted Hotel, Mating Season, Strip Law, and Alley Cats, and action shows like Blood of Zeus, Castlevania: Nocturne, Devil May Cry, Splinter Cell: Deathwatch, and Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. Prime Video had at least six animated misses, two in the same universe (Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss), three more comedies (#1 Happy Family USA, The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy and Kevin) and an action show (The Mighty Nein). Disney+ had MCU and Star Wars animated misses (Eyes of Wakanda, Marvel Zombies, Star Wars: Visions, Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord, and Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld) but I can’t tell how many of those shows were geared towards adults. HBO Max had Harley Quinn and Hulu had Solar Opposites. None of these shows made the charts! That’s a lot of misses! If I remade the chart with all those misses, here’s how it would look: Listen, I know the counter arguments. First, it’s cheaper to produce animated shows than live action. Fair enough, but with viewership this low, even that cheaper price point starts to not matter. Second, just look at the acquired charts. Hit animated comedies can generate viewership for years! Shows like The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, and Bob’s Burgers do really, really well. Fair enough, but streaming has failed to recreate the dynamic that Fox has mastered so well. That’s a problem for streaming still. Television - Emmys! The annual Emmys broadcast was a few weeks ago, and I’ve got data on how the nominees performed on streaming, plus hot takes on this year’s viewership (and the big news about the broadcast’s, er, streamcast’s future). We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… The top Emmy-nominated shows… ...why I’m worried about the future of the Emmys telecast... ...the pros of broadcast television ...and the cons... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. Coming Soon! Next week, we’ve got a double issue (since the weeks of 21-Sep and 28-Sep were so light), but then I’ll be all caught up after a deluge of streaming ratings data from Nielsen in September. In the meantime, I’m going to try to take a look at Netflix’s stats to explain why Bela Bajaria is out. But even light weeks give me plenty to talk about. The Great British Baking Show returns to Netflix and Apple TV has a buzzy new star-studded comedy. And Netflix has a controversial-but-appears-to-be-popular new game show. Plus big films like Toy Story 5, Backrooms and The Breadwinner head to streaming. And is East of Eden a hit? After that, The Kardashians return to Hulu, Prime Video has a reboot of Carrie, and Netflix has a horror show, Below. Disclosure Day heads to Peacock, The Housemaid heads to HBO Max_,_ a new Ben Affleck film, Animals, lands on Netflix, and Apple TV has a new John Cena action film based on, checks notes, Hasbro’s Matchbox toys. Okay. Longterm, some interesting TV production news. HBO Max ordered How to Survive Without Me, starring Kaley Cuoco, Joshua Jackson, Ray Romano and Rita Wilson, for fifteen episodes! I love that some streamers (or, at least, HBO Max) are finally ordering TV shows with more than eight episodes. In less wise production news, Landman does not appear to be coming back this year, since it just started production. Frankly, I don’t love this (get your shows out on time) but Landman is so popular, I doubt it matters.
Daredevil Jumped 25,000 Feet Without a Parachute. Now He Wants to Leap from Space: ‘That’s the Dream, the Drop-the-Mic Thing’
“Impossible is just an opinion,” said Luke Aikins, who hopes to jump from a rocket 330,000 feet above Earth
Every Major USB-C Cable Brand Ranked Worst To Best
All of these USB-C cable brands are worth buying, but because the devil is in the details, some brands have managed to separate themselves from the pack.
North Carolina Football vs. Duke: Betting Lines, Injury Report
Fresh off an upset at Pitt, the underdog North Carolina Tar Heels visit Durham to battle the Duke Blue Devils.
Game Preview #8: New Jersey Devils at Washington Capitals
The Devils are going to need their best to beat another Metropolitan Division opponent.
Everyone is Saying the Same Thing About Duke's Expected Top Scorer
The Blue Devils need him to get going.
Rangers embarrassed by Devils in 7-1 blowout loss
Thursday night’s edition of the Hudson River Rivalry will surely conjure bad memories for the Blueshirts faithful. The New York […]
Top Duke Basketball Recruiting Target Cancels Upcoming Visits
A top Duke Basketball recruiting target has cancelled some upcoming visits which signals good news for the Blue Devils.
LRSC volleyball beats Science for the second time this year
Lake Region State College has beaten North Dakota State College of Science once again.
Michael Brandsegg-Nygard Is Forcing Red Wings’ Hand
Michael Brandsegg-Nygard continues to enjoy a stellar 2026-27 campaign in the season’s early going with another strong performance.Early in the second period on Tuesday night, as the Detroit Red Wings took on the New Jersey Devils, Brandsegg-Nygard notched his second goal of the season with assists from Emmitt Finnie and Alex DeBrincat.And it was one […] The post Michael Brandsegg-Nygard Is Forcing Red Wings’ Hand appeared first on HEAVY.
Man United Set To 'Attack' The January Transfer Window
Michael Carrick’s struggling squad eyes vital reinforcements as Fabrizio Romano reveals the Red Devils possess the remaining funds necessary to fix glaring roster gaps this winter.
🗞️ A devilish matchday: Champions League dominates Tuesday's front pages
The Champions League returns to the spotlight with tough away trips for Barça and Atlético, while the 'Negreira case' and managerial upheaval dominate the headlines.A challenge in hell and the 'Metr...
J.T. Compher Could Return Tuesday Against New Jersey
Detroit has a call to make on J.T. Compher before the Devils visit Tuesday. #RedWings
‘Leni’s Last Lament’ at Intiman Theatre confronts filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl
This one-woman show, centered on controversial German director Leni Riefenstahl, doesn’t set out to provoke sympathy for the devil.
NHL’s New Wave of GMs Are Built Different: ‘I Am In the Prediction Business’
“I am in the prediction business,” Devils GM Sunny Mehta tells FOS.
‘One of the ocean’s best-kept secrets’ spotted near Massachusetts
Hint: They have a 12-foot-wide wingspan and can weigh up to 1,100 pounds.
"I Don't Think..." – Michael Carrick Claims Intensity Wasn't The Issue vs Spurs
A stoppage-time collapse and recurring midfield sluggishness haunt the Red Devils, forcing Michael Carrick to defend his squad's fitness levels after a frustrating stalemate against ten-man Tottenham.
Charlie Cox Reveals He's Already Recorded 40 Hours Of Lines For A Surprise Sega Game
The Daredevil and Clair Obscur actor confirmed the new voice acting work during his appearance at NYCC
Duke's 40-point exhibition victory reveals unexpected new scoring threat
It was a good start, albeit an exhibition for the Blue Devils.
Daredevil Star Charlie Cox Confirms He's in an Unannounced Sega Game
Daredevil star Charlie Cox has confirmed that he is starring in another video game, this one for Sega.
Everything announced at Marvel TV's New York Comic Con panel
From "VisionQuest" to "Daredevil: Born Again" Season 3, here's what we learned and saw.
‘Daredevil: Born Again’ stars preview Defenders reunion with final season teaser
Marvel’s ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ stars staged a Defenders reunion at New York Comic Con to preview the final season of the superhero show.
Business Notes: Virginia Beach police, fire departments reaccredited; pretzel shop opens in Kill Devil Hills
View which organizations are giving back and which ones are celebrating milestones.
Duke Disrespected as Undefeated College Football Team; Upset Predicted
Despite a dominant ground game and an unblemished record, the Blue Devils remain overlooked by critics. Now, an impending clash with Georgia Tech threatens their bid for national respect.
Where Duke Football Projects to Play Bowl Game This Season
Where will the Duke Blue Devils end up in terms of their bowl game? The latest projections have them going up against a Big Ten foe.
ESPN Likes Duke to Stay Undefeated Against Georgia Tech
The Duke Blue Devils are being favored to stay undefeated this week against Georgia Tech.
Key Recruiting Target Visiting Duke Basketball on Monday
The Duke Blue Devils are getting a visit from a five-star recruit in the 2028 class on Monday.
Duke Blue Devils Land Prediction for Key Recruit
The Duke Blue Devils landed a crystal ball prediction for a big five-star recruiting target in the 2027 class.
Duke Lands in Top-20 Rankings From Bleacher Report
The Duke Blue Devils have landed in the top 20 of a new ranking from Bleacher Report.
ASU overwhelmed by Baylor's physicality in blowout loss
ASU entered the game 15th nationally in total yards allowed in first halves (121.3), and the Bears hung 299 yards on the Sun Devils in the first 30 minutes.
New York Islanders vs. New Jersey Devils: Home opener thread
The Islanders host the Devils for their 2026-27 home opener Saturday night. They’re on a 7-0-1 run against the Devils so expect a certain loss. Here are the tweaked lines as Pete DeBoer searches for chemistry, whether or not he has the elements and molecules to find it: mil Heineman – Bo Horvat – Kyle […]
Does Duke football play today? No. 21 Blue Devils' schedule
Taking a look at the rest of the 2026 season for Duke football after a 4-0 start.
How to watch Grimsley vs Varina Blue Devils high school football
You can watch Grimsley football all season long with NFHS Network, including this week’s game against Varina Blue Devils.
Islanders News: Darche on summer, Duclair on target
Good morning and happy Friday, the New York Islanders are last in the Metro. Islanders News Elsewhere Last night’s scores included the Jack Hughes getting the Devils the win in overtime after he objected to a mid-game question from AJ Mleczko about bubble wrap and plastic utensils (he was reportedly injured during a team dinner […]
Flyers suffer overtime loss to Devils, drop first two games of season
The Flyers couldn’t bounce back from their dreadful season opener as they fell to the Devils, 3-2, in OT.
Here's How Duke Basketball Will Benefit From Exhibition Game
The Duke Blue Devils will benefit from their preseason exhibition game against Tennessee.
Stars sign goalie Casey DeSmith to 2-year, $5 million extension
DeSmith has a 29-16-8 record with a .911 save percentage.
Vincent D'Onofrio Shuts Down God Of War Laufey Gooner Complaints: 'Buddy Got Bodied By Kingpin'
The Daredevil costar has no time for unhinged gamer conspiracies
New York Film and TV Tax Incentive Drives Production Boom
Thanks to a recent enhancement to the state tax incentive, New York's film and TV production business is booming.
Duke Slammed by ESPN in College Football Playoff Projection
Despite an undefeated start and a nation-leading ground game, the Blue Devils remain snubbed in CFP projections, sparking a heated debate over brand bias versus actual results.
Kevin Schade 'Open' To Man Utd Transfer Despite Arsenal Interest
The German winger’s prolific form has sparked a heavyweight recruiting battle, leaving the Red Devils poised to hijack Arsenal’s pursuit as Old Trafford accelerates a massive squad overhaul.
Man Utd Learn Conditions To Appoint Breakout Premier League Manager
As Michael Carrick’s tenure falters, the Red Devils eye Brighton’s tactical prodigy Fabian Hürzeler, though a massive compensation fee stands between the German and Old Trafford.
Man Utd Told To Replace £60 Million Midfield Star
Louis Saha claims the Red Devils blundered by failing to secure a creative playmaker who could outperform the injury-prone midfielder and raise the squad's tactical intensity.
Devils beaten 3-1 at Steelers in Challenge Cup
Cardiff Devils remain without a win on the road in the Challenge Cup having been beaten 3-1 at 100% Group A leaders Sheffield Steelers.
Propelled by locals, driven by angels
Film on El Jebel daredevil Shafer plays Isis on Friday
New bag restrictions at Prudential Center anger Devils fans
All bags larger than 4″ x 6″ x 1.5″ are prohibited at the arena.
The Mysterious Devil’s Arrows Stones Appeared in England 4,000 Years Ago. Scientists Just Learned Where They’re From.
Ice-flow models rule out natural transport, leaving prehistoric engineers as the only ones who could do it.
A ‘devil-like’ flower from Thailand is new to science
Botanists in Thailand have identified a new-to-science species of “fairy lantern” — plants that live almost entirely buried under leaf litter, emerging aboveground only occasionally to flower. Researchers were surveying evergreen forests in the mountains of Thong Pha Phum National Park when they chanced upon a plant none of them had ever seen before, at […]
Kenny Dillingham Offers Solutions to Arizona State’s Offensive Struggles
Kenny Dillingham and the Arizona State Sun Devils are in the midst of a necessary off week.Arizona State (2-1, 1-0 Big 12) are freshly coming off a conference-opening victory over the Kansas Jayhawks on Saturday.Despite the victory, there are several questions facing Dillingham and this team in particular. Saturday’s victory marks the first one that […] The post Kenny Dillingham Offers Solutions to Arizona State’s Offensive Struggles appeared first on HEAVY.
Mandeville native Julia Ernst's star is on the rise as she sings her way toward opera career
She has sung for the music director of the New York Philharmonic, studies opera at Yale and may be headed toward a career on some of the world’s biggest stages. But Mandeville’s Julia Ernst still misses her mama — and the fried shrimp po’boys at Zara's Lil Giant Supermarket on Prytania.
How lip-syncing to AI let Forced Entertainment ‘play the game of theatre’
Today we have a fascinating piece by long-time Forced Entertainment fan Ben Kulvichit, speaking to Tim Etchells about their latest show Cold Sweat, how they are integrating lip-sync and AI voices into their work, the question of ‘authenticity’ on stage, and how lip-sync has even opened the door for them to make “something a little bit like drama”. This piece is a paid partnership with the Southbank Centre, where you can see Cold Sweat next month – we’re very grateful to the Southbank Centre for their ongoing support for Exeunt. Holly Williams ‘It was immediately interesting and uncanny’ **By Ben Kulvichit** “Is the microphone on?” So goes one of the opening lines of Signal to Noise, delivered by a human performer lip-syncing to an AI-generated voice. The voice is American, cheery but sluggish, slowed down into a gelatinous drawl. It repeats ad infinitum in a farce of stuckness; an answer never materialises. I find myself asking the same question as I hop on a Google Meet call with Tim Etchells, the artistic director of Forced Entertainment. We spend five or ten minutes frowning at each other, muting and unmuting, me gesticulating in semaphore into my webcam, checking if I am coming through now, restarting the laptop. To Etchells, I appear exaggeratedly mouthing words, my voice missing. In this gloopy purgatory of broken communication, life imitates art imitates life imitates art. We try a Zoom instead. Forced Entertainment, the pioneering British theatre company who have been at the avant-garde of performance since the 1980s, turned an interesting artistic corner with Signal to Noise, created on the occasion of their 40th anniversary. The whole performance employed this lip-sync technique to AI voices; on the face of it a left-field move from a company whose identity has long been grounded in the earthy, immediate presences of its performers and its unassuming, low-tech approach to theatricality. The technique, however, turned out to provide the company with a “rich new seam” of artistic enquiry, and has now spawned a trilogy of works. The second instalment, Cold Sweat, plays at Sheffield Theatres, Southbank Centre, and Lancaster Arts in October, while the third part, Everything Must Go, has been touring in Europe and is slated to come to the UK in 2027. As is often the case with Forced Entertainment shows, the main conceit for this work didn’t arrive until quite late. They were “four or five weeks into rehearsals for Signal to Noise,” Etchells recalls, and getting nowhere. Away from rehearsals, he had been playing around with feeding “weird texts” to AI voices to see how they would cope with them – “basically for my own amusement” – and was compelled by the uniformly “serviceable, benign, good-natured” tone they would read in, no matter how poetic, fractured or experimental the writing. On a hunch, he brought some examples into rehearsals and the performers gave lip-syncing a go. “It was immediately interesting and uncanny,” he recalls, with the performers having to deal in the moment with the problem of mapping themselves onto another artificial ‘performer,’ which itself was dealing with the problem of a very human text. “Almost all the writing for these projects would be useless to us unless it was done in this way,” says Etchells. “We wouldn’t know what to do with it. It’s too poetic. It’s too fictional. It’s too tangled.” But exploring lip-syncing along to the text has opened “an enormous reservoir of ways of thinking about writing and performing.” Subscribe to Exeunt, and get two in-depth pieces on theatre a week, direct to your inbox Subscribe Forced Entertainment have long been sifting through the detritus of popular culture, from daytime TV to end-of-the-pier vaudeville, magic acts and clown shows, to find frameworks for their own unusual entertainments. Lip-syncing, then, makes sense for them to experiment with. As a mode of performance, it’s wired into popular consciousness through pop stars trying to convince stadium audiences of their liveness, or those same voices as channeled through the made-up lips of contestants on RuPaul’s Drag Race, or movie dialogue spreading virally through the host bodies of TikTok users. For Etchells, lip-syncing is often about “approaching real voices and trying to take on their aura,” subsuming that original human presence into yours. “There’s a very basic, elemental sort of theatre magic to it, produced in this very easy way.” This broad approach resonates with instances of lip-syncing within contemporary performance, too. In works like Re-Member Me and Showmanism, performance artist Dickie Beau acts as a kind of spirit medium for archival recordings (this process of re-membering – as in, giving corporeal form to voices – relies on his masterfully precise actor’s technique), while Frankie Thompson is similarly possessed by a host of characters ranging from a nine-year-old Jacob Rees-Mogg to Cliff Richards, all of whom she finds compellingly nauseating, in the exorcism ritual that is her latest show, Horrible Things. What’s different about Forced Entertainment’s use of lip-syncing is that here, there is no original presence to be channeled. The performers are instead taking on what Etchells describes as “the voices of nobody,” or rather the “phantasmic, aggregated echoes” of the many many voices on whose data the AI has been trained, and which are now conjuring into existence words they never actually said. There is a sort of mournful, empty quality to these voices, having “washed up” far away from the people they originally belonged to, to find themselves in stranger’s mouths listing objects, wondering if anyone can hear them and glitching in interminable loops. There is a cold, sad anonymity to it all. Etchells remarks that occasionally the software company he used has notified him that particular people are withdrawing their voices from the platform, instructing him to cease use of those voices. Using these technologies in performance certainly brings up ethical questions around digital rights, consent, identity and ownership, although in the grand scheme of things, Etchells is fairly blasé about it: of all the purposes someone’s voice might be put to without their knowledge, “an avant-garde performance is probably the least of their worries.” [ ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/frankie-thompson-horrible-things-essay-mental-health-compulsive-behaviours-pleasance-courtyard-soho-theatre) [ Frankie Thompson: How I manage my own ‘horrible things’ at the Edinburgh Fringe ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/frankie-thompson-horrible-things-essay-mental-health-compulsive-behaviours-pleasance-courtyard-soho-theatre) Exeunt · Aug 25 [ Read full story ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/frankie-thompson-horrible-things-essay-mental-health-compulsive-behaviours-pleasance-courtyard-soho-theatre) For the performers, though, lip-syncing to these strange, artificial voices is an odd task, requiring them to bend their live, human presence into the shapes produced by machines. Politically, it mirrors processes that are already at play in the continued computational automation of human life. Etchells brings up James Bridle’s writings on new technologies as a reference point: one example Bridle gives is of “chaotic storage”, a logistics technique employed by Amazon fulfilment centres whereby items are stored not according to traditional methods of categorisation or alphabetisation, but in a way that an algorithm determines to produce the most efficient routes for ‘picking’ based on customer purchase patterns. This appears completely random and incomprehensible to humans, with paddling pools sitting next to USB sticks sitting next to blowtorches, and so for the warehouse workers, the process of picking items becomes completely reliant on technology which tells them where to go. Our world is increasingly being designed not with humans in mind, but rather machines. As Etchells puts it, “technology malforms the space, and then you end up having to live in it.” Initially, Forced Entertainment tried their best to live in the world of machines: “I was in the it’s-got-to-be-perfect school of lip-sync,” says Etchells. But with their aesthetic being so tied to the failing act, the slipping mask, the shoddy costume, “it’s no surprise really that that didn’t last.” Instead, the performers got to enjoy being late for a line, or playing games with each other, “stealing” each other’s voices. Etchells compares it to the principles of ventriloquism, in which a free-floating voice unattached to a body is fundamentally discomforting and “sort of traumatic”. That discomfort is equally as alluring to Forced Entertainment as the satisfaction of precision, the pretence of authenticity only interesting if shown to be a pretence. Lip-sync has also opened up new avenues for the company. Having been allergic all their lives to Plays-with-a-capital-P, with Cold Sweat Forced Entertainment find themselves approaching something a little bit like drama. Rather than the presentational arena of Signal to Noise’s open white stage, Cold Sweat places us more decisively in a “fictional locale”: what appears to be “the aftermath of some disastrous party or backyard drinking binge” where three figures – family members, or neighbours, perhaps – are the last ones standing. “It’s all quite acrimonious and accusatory, everyone’s talking over each other.” For Etchells, this more fictional mode is “a door that we’ve never been able to open. We’ve just never really gone there.” Perhaps it is the technique of lip-syncing, an extra buffer of mediation, that allows them to venture away from the here-and-now without feeling that they have to commit to the “psychological claptrap” that comes along with acting; to be able to “play the game of theatre, without getting one’s hands too dirty.” As I wonder how else the impulses behind Forced Entertainment’s work have changed over time, it occurs to me that over the last ten years of new creations, with the exception of If All Else Fails, the company’s performers haven’t ever spoken on stage: there were two shows without any language at all, Out of Order and Under Bright Light, and then this trilogy of lip-sync works. Etchells agrees it’s a shift away from earlier productions, that were so often about “the actual voices of the performers and their actual presences. We had a lot of money, in some ways, on an authentic approach to what it might mean to speak on the stage.” But this sense of authentic presence itself had a fakeness to it; these days, Etchells can’t stand that mode of being onstage where performers “are here to be cheeky and witty versions of themselves. I don’t want to be charmed.” Pulling back into a more anonymous space has resulted in works that feel slightly sharper-edged, more brutal in a way. “All of these shows are post-Brexit, post-Trump, post-truth, post-everything,” Etchells notes. Speech, charisma, authenticity – these things feel politically loaded, and perhaps warmth and openness just don’t feel like the right tools to reflect the world we’re living in. “It feels like the space is closing down, and we’re trying to deal with the fact that the system, the structure that you’re in, is more oppressive and more powerful. It probably always was, but I think we’re just more tuned to it now.” Yet even without their voices, the performers’ distinctive presences – ones that many audiences have followed around for years, if not decades – still, inevitably, shine through as they physically navigate whatever unending task the system of the piece has set for them. They’re still trying to keep up with the onslaught of text, still running about, changing costumes, moving stuff around. The human is always stuck in the teeth of the machine, jamming the smooth, frictionless cheeriness of the not-real, gesticulating silently, trying desperately to communicate. Cold Sweat is at Sheffield Theatres, 2 to 3 October; Southbank Centre, London, 9 to 10 October; Lancaster Arts, 14 October [ ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/exeunt-recommends-the-best-autumn-theatre-2026-lives-of-others-standard-of-living-our-friends-in-the-north-lanny-) [ Exeunt recommends... the best autumn theatre ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/exeunt-recommends-the-best-autumn-theatre-2026-lives-of-others-standard-of-living-our-friends-in-the-north-lanny-) Exeunt · Sep 16 [ Read full story ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/exeunt-recommends-the-best-autumn-theatre-2026-lives-of-others-standard-of-living-our-friends-in-the-north-lanny-) This piece was paid for by the Southbank Centre. Such support helps Exeunt to keep publishing the most interesting writing, about the most exciting theatre. Interested in partnering with Exeunt? Visit our Advertise with Exeunt page, where you can get more information, download an advertising pack, and find our contact details.
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