Audience Relationship: how do we negotiate space together – physical, theoretical, virtual, shared, private?

If we are truly to take someone on a journey, we need agreement on both sides on what form that experience will take. Quite quickly, it was evidenced that a passive, sit down and be quiet when the lights go down wasn’t the way we wanted (or indeed needed) the audience to experience Squeeze Box.

Squeeze Box aims to negotiate some quite sticky territory, raw lived experience that is both personal and universal. The way these memories have manifested is through a totally underfunded medical/social system bogged down by systematic ableism and bureaucracy, by both the political sphere and communities who do not have to engage with it.

Process: ‘Let’s do an hour Zoom, you know what we’re like, we’ll get lost in grand ideas and the theoretical constructs of…’ – Cat Radford, Squeeze Box R&D producer

With process happening during covid restrictions, Zoom offered instant ways to communicate, connect and devise together – to efficiently schedule and share content and ideas, talk through logistics and lay the groundworks for Squeeze Box. Much wisdom and genius was shared during these Zooms, inspiring and challenging practise. In the comfort of homes/studios etc, it was easy to allow ideas to walk freely from just a few pages of early concepts, multiple mind map documents and graphics were conjured. Ideas spun from lived experience and previous projects to theoretical spaces, straying far from the nuts and bolts of practical exploration and Zoom fatigue. These ideas need to be valued and played with in space.

Playing in Space: projection can make any building a canvas – soundscapes can make any environment an installation.

The feel or essence of an environment or building plays an important role in artistic structure, adding and weaving more dimensions. Cockington Court and grounds are a publicly owned country park and a happy accident led our R&D there. The sublime, peaceful setting of Cockington may have countered the harsh, raw topics explored in Squeeze Box. Yet, it is also possible the opposite happened creating a unique juxtaposition – this same juxtaposition as the bloody and turmoil history of Cockington, hidden by lush green and peaceful nature. There’s a certain tranquillity even when sound penetrates and the idea of harm or danger is not palpable there, giving a solid and safe foundation. Cockington always has a feeling of hidden secrets that are yet to be uncovered and those secrets could be infinite with artistic expression

Contextualisation: part of Squeeze Box’s job is to allow audiences to have an emotional, visual and aural relationship with the models of disability – which are, in themselves problematic – why do you need models to understand a disabled body and not other identities?

There are two main lenses in which to view disability, the Social Model, emerging as a protest to the outdated, yet still prevalent, Medical Model. More recently, a new (both arguably more progressive and a backward step) lens has been proposed, the Affirmation Model. These models, or ways of understanding (or ‘othering’) sit between the lived and the academic and Squeeze Box explores ways to connect the two. Combining a deep dive into Hugh’s world and workshops with disabled individuals from CEDA helps understand what disability is and what is important to those who are labelled as such. Discourses include being listen to and lied to, disability as a performance and how society values or disempowers diversity.

The Creative Team: and their take on Squeeze Box

Steve Sowden – feeling a real privilege to pour rage into addressing these issues, Steve will work towards turning around the medical model by allowing people to feel the impact this model has and then facilitating a pushback against these themes – being proactive not reactive

Nathalie Palin – playing with ideas and metaphors of power in small boxes by critically analysing the process and providing subtleties to remind us all to continue to play with the personal and political

Cat Radford – will be going back to the creative process and working with both new and old people – the mastermind behind linking strings of this diverse group and the uncomfortable themes they explore and melding the two together

Tim Dollimore – will combine his many talents within this creative process. Bringing creativity together with his social interest in disability and passion for social psychology Tim wants to work towards changing big perspectives

Sam Parker – Utilising skills as a dramaturg, both in text and practically, Sam wants to ask good questions to push the boundaries and possibilities yet maintain narrative and cause.

Jen Noice – working on the subtleties and nuances that tell hard truths without affronting the audience – taking risks and enabling Hugh to build his practise in an honest and impactful way