Squeeze Box

Free/Pay What You Can - minimum £1 as a deposit, which will be compensated through refreshments.

All proceeds go to help Maketank support more local independent artists.

6pm - the Squeeze Box performance. Join us from midday (12 noon) to see and interact with (workshop) projection, soundscaping and creativity along the themes of identity and how we care for one another.

An experimental, live sound and projection installation for and about the disabled experience A deep, constantly evolving a creative exploration of the world of disability – an immersive space incorporating multi-projection and video/audio to amplify impaired voices.

Squeeze Box flows through a loose narrative of the all-encompassing emotional rollercoaster of a care package assessment, where faceless names and nameless panels decide the worth of an individual – who ‘deserves’ to be able to get up this morning, who shall we allow to eat today?

Squeeze Box takes audiences through the almost out-of-body experience of seeing your life decided for you. The central storyteller, Hugh, has experienced first-hand, constant examinations & assessments whilst navigating an underfunded and misrepresented medical/social system bogged down by systematic ableism & bureaucracy – feeling like being ‘Squeezed’ into a ‘Box’ is just the tip of the iceberg. Hugh’s silenced voice has no impact here.

 Warmly held by pre/post show conversations, humour, gentle moments and humanity, artist and audiences transcend politics, silo–thinking and the status-quo, reaching inner emotions, empathy and impulsion. This is punctuated by the hard-hitting reality of social care cuts, directly reaching the essence of what it is like to be Squeezed into a Box – leaving behind identity, self-worth and spirit.

Squeeze Box is a hybrid experiment which transfers creative/non-creative spaces into an antechamber of expression, individuality and togetherness. A multifaceted audience experience, heightened by live interventions, transforms space from huddles of welcoming conversation to full-blooded immersion in: projections, moving walls, soundscapes, medical equipment, props, manipulating communication ‘aids’, arresting social care assessments clashing with voice. Squeeze Box creates emotional battles, through joy and despair, desolation to solidarity.

Participants can place themselves: right in the middle like a mosh pit of creative expression, shift either side of the fourth wall or more conventionally from the outside looking in. Both narrative/content and participation in the protest against ableist structures enables vital conversations on whose voice is heard and to what extent cuts in social care/care packages have on individuals, communities and society.

Squeeze Box positions everyone within the objectified framework of ableist structures and (sometimes simultaneously) the inexorable force of disability as positive identity – what it feels like to have the air sucked out of you versus the collective power of humanity within.

Audience feedback:

• ‘Love how open it is to interpretation. As an audience we are always thinking’
• ‘Something about the space I just wanted to play and get involved’
• ‘Really thought provoking. incredible work’

Schedule:

• 12 midday: sound, projection and performance begins, exploring care and empathy
• 5pm: pre-performance settling in period to acclimatise to/get comfy in the space
• 6pm: the energy will start building towards…
• 6.30pm: the initiation of Squeeze Box
• 7.30pm: opportunity to discuss themes and offer feedback
• 9pm: Squeeze Box closes