About Squeeze Box
Squeeze Box is a creative organism, a mycelium of makers, who support the artistic vision and disabled-led practice of Hugh Malyon.
Their process allows them to understand the power of humanity more deeply, whilst developing together and growing as a care-centred transdisciplinary collective.
Squeeze Box opens direct conversation on care as a universal experience through installation, performance and workshop.
Who’s Who: Live Performers
Hugh Malyon is a disabled performer transcending toxic narratives of disability, showcasing impairment through beauty, care, empathy, voice amplification, process and protest.
Steve Sowden co-creates narrative through soundscapes and a live score, using sampled, looped, pre-recorded, improv and instrumental sounds.
Tim Dollimore is a Creative Technologist crafting stage works and experiences, bringing a deep understanding of performance technology to bear in productions of all sizes.
Emma Jane Mansfield is a professional British Sign Language/English interpreter and translator specialising in performance, music and theatre. She is a singer-songwriter musician and teddy bear artist who has performed a huge range of theatre shows, festivals, music gigs and workshops.
Who’s Who: Facilitators and artist support
Clair Sargeant is a Plymouth-based neurodivergent movement and theatre artist. Clair is a co-director of Far Flung CIC and specialises in disability arts practice and access consultancy for theatre.
Jennifer Noice’s knowledge and understanding of how Hugh and the Squeeze Box team works creatively informs her role, which oversees many aspects of Squeeze Box and shapes the core of care within the team and for those who enter the performance space.
Shelley Hodgson is a creative producer of socially engaged projects across the South West, specialising in projects that platform a diversity of voices across society. She has recently performed at SOAK in Plymouth with collaborator Mark Leahy and is a collaborator with Room To Manoeuvre.
There is lots of energy and humanity coming out of Exeter Northcott. Their commitment to access and the meaningful work they are platforming is not only exciting, but potentially culture shifting! I can’t wait to play a small part in this, and see our collaborations and creative output flourish as a result.
Hugh Malyon
Squeeze Box’s Work
Elevate Festival Residency
As part of our first ever Elevate Festival in October 2024, we offered Squeeze Box space and support to spend some time making.
During their residency, Squeeze Box worked on a participatory blend of live performance, soundscape and projection about the disabled experience. This live sound/projection installation explored: harsh realities of labels and austerity spontaneously interrupted by improv, interactions, popcorn sharing and bad dad jokes.
Their residency culminated in an invite-only sharing (pictured), bringing together radical tech, lo-fi instruments, workshop and the artist’s voice to create space to play, engage and reflect. Audiences were invited into an intimate space to bear witness to Hugh’s exploration of how his lived experience of disability is distorted beyond recognition by dehumanising systems of assessment.
ELEVATE MASTERCLASS – ACCESS AND CARE IN THE REHEARSAL ROOM
Squeeze Box is developing a takeover model including workshops, performance, installations and interventions. The concept delves into what being disabled means to each of us and how to create a more accessible community.
As part of their residency at Elevate Festival 2024, the Squeeze Box team bookended their invite-only immersive performance with a welcome and a relaxed, workshop-style Q&A, free and exclusively available to our Elevate members.
Humetheus and the Quest for the Bronze Cloak
A timely and resonant digital performance merging classical Odyssean myth with English seaside landscapes, stories of epic battles against cultural ‘othering’, social isolation and other colossal hardships.
Humetheus and the Quest for the Bronze Cloak was originally a 20-minute digital scratch performance for Bradford’s inclusive. hybrid theatre platform Barrel Organ Live. We are now supporting Squeeze Box to re-imagine the work as a live piece of theatre.
Devised and performed by Hugh Malyon (Humetheus) and Steve Sowden (Tyrant King). Featuring the voice of Erin Walcon as the Oracle. Thanks to Barrel Organ ad CRiPtic Art, who generously supported research and development of and access to the work, and to Jennifer Noice for dramaturgical and practical support.
SUPPORT OUR WORK WITH ARTISTS
If you like what we’re doing, please consider donating to support our work with artists. We are a charity and every donation helps!
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