Boxes of photos from your teenage bedroom.
A lava lamp.
Bundles of baby clothes.
That torn T-shirt that you just can’t get rid of…
Handle With Care is a new immersive play staged in self-storage buildings about the things we hold onto, their value and how they tell our individual stories. To create the show we're working with playwright Chloë Moss, following on from our collaboration on I Do. Seen through the eyes of a young woman as she gets older, the performance is an intimately personal, fly-on-the-wall experience through the corridors and units of self-storage buildings. We are really excited to be collaborating with a variety of self-storage companies around the country, who are hosting the production in different towns and cities: Urban Locker, Lok’nStore and Ready Steady Store.
The show studies how we accumulate objects, the meaning that we place on those seemingly banal belongings and how they can give us a sense of home. Join Zoe from 1988 to the present as she stores and stores and stores as the years go on and on and on.
- Created by Daphna Attias & Terry O'Donovan with Chloë Moss
- Directed by Daphna Attias
- Text by Chloë Moss
- Design by Jenny Hayton
- Lighting Design by Zoe Spurr
- Sound Design by Yaniv Fridel & JP Thwaites
- Cast Amy Dolan, Stephen Henry, Benjamin Humphrey, Elan James, Terry O'Donovan & Rachael Spence with Lucy Yates, Rachel Wright, Anushka Samarasinghe, Lucie Jenkins, Florence Maclennan, Stefy Barton & Maria Ahmed
- Lighting Assistant Roisin Dullard
- Stage Manager Philip Hussey
- Assistant Stage Manger Richard Irvine & Katy Taylor
- Casting Hammond Cox Casting
- PR Clióna Roberts
- Video & Marketing Design Justin Jones
“an intricately choreographed bit of theatre that finds in the strip-lit corridors and corrugated units of self-storage a powerful metaphor for our emotional hinterland.”
The Guardian
“This fragmented approach produces some individually striking moments. One room in particular mesmerisingly conveys Zoe’s passage from partying youth to responsibility-filled motherhood, swiftly traversing a number of years...there’s a beautiful transition from one stage in life to the next”
Exeunt
“they skilfully blend narrative with a nuanced and detailed sense of the emotional and visceral transitions we make as we grow older”
Total Theatre
“a witty, intimate and tenderly crafted piece of theatre”
London Theatre 1
“Cleverly choreographed in an extremely unusual space”
Everything Theatre
“If you only see one show this year I strongly recommend you make sure that it is this one.”
The Reviews Hub
“Dante or Die are experts in site-specific theatre.”
The Arts Desk
The brand new production premiered at The Lowry's Week 53 Festival with Ready Steady Store before heading on tour to Harlow Playhouse, South Street Arts Centre and Lighthouse Poole with Lok'nStore.
A co-commission with The Lowry, Harlow Playhouse, South Street Reading, Lighthouse Poole and is supported through funding from Arts Council England.
