Boxed In flyer
Available to stream on our On Demand platform
A heartfelt story about being made to feel naughty, just because the rules don’t make sense.
Boxed In follows the journey of someone who struggles to understand the rules that surround us all. Sometimes stop means go and go means stop. Are you supposed to go this way or that? Sometimes it’s up and sometimes it’s down.
In a world where everyone else seems to understand, it can all get a bit confusing. And when you get it wrong, you’re made to sit out, but you don’t understand why. It seems so unfair.
Boxed In explores the unspoken barriers of attitudes, social etiquette and behaviour that surround us. How do you know a barrier is there if you can’t see it? And if you can’t see it, how can you remove it?
Boxed in was a Daryl & Co. and Half Moon co-production; an exciting collaboration by a ground-breaking Disabled-led theatre company and the UK’s leading small-scale young people’s venue and touring company. It was largely non-verbal, making makes it accessible to a wide range of people, including d/Deaf, hard of hearing, BSL users and non-English speakers.
Boxed in toured to 20 venues including libraries in February and March 2024.
Boxed In is available to watch on our On Demand streaming platform. The film has closed captioning and is also available with Audio Description.
“Boxes, bubble wrap and bananas all add up to a fabulously fun show about rules and how they can be confusing… A wonderfully playful and engaging production that invites a young audience to think about how unspoken rules exist in society, and how behaviours can be different for different people… A cleverly considered piece of work that is full of laughter but also full of interesting questions… A playfully positive way to imagine a world where we’re all included and, with a little effort, everyone’s way of being can be accommodated.”
Everything Theatre
“Ten stars out of five!”
Audience member
“Fantastic show, brilliant expressions and acting. Kept captivated throughout.”
Audience member
“The show is funny and I wanted to watch it again”
Audience member
“It was such a stimulating (and thought-provoking show) and my boys continue to refer back to it playfully. Our eldest has dyspraxia and the subtlety of the rules seen/followed or disruptive to individuals was such a topical subject for us all, in such a wonderful format. I was unaware at the time of booking how relevant your show might be to us as a family – I hope that many more families (children and adults) benefit from your wonderful show. We will look out for further performances by your company.”
Audience feedback
“We liked how many bananas you ate!”
Audience member
“A great performance about difference”
Audience member
“This is the best show we’ve seen in a long time! It was hilarious and touching at the same time. My little boy and I laughed a lot during the performance. Thank you for a morning well spent and for allowing us a glimpse into the world of people who experience the world differently and that we can all learn to live together in harmony if we try to understand each other.”
Audience member
“This is a really funny, entertaining piece of work – also a wonderful experience of normalising disability for children and encouraging them to think about how others share their space. Plus, there are bananas! 🍌🍌”
Audience member
“We really enjoyed it, and thought the show was so well done. Everything from the rules at the start of the show through to the interactive parts at the end were so well thought out. So effective, expressive, funny and enjoyable, my kids were enthralled!”
Audience member
This piece, previously called An Unseen World, grew out of our participation in A Different Way, a 2019-2020 disability advocacy project curated by Daryl & Co (then Daryl Beeton Productions) in partnership with the Spark Festival, Leicester. The project aimed to address the lack of disability representation in work for young audiences.
Through the project, we demonstrated new approaches when creating work for young audiences by disabled theatre makers that place the voice of young disabled people at the heart of the approach; explored new ways of communicating the different nuances of access and inclusion to young audiences; and aimed to support the growth and development of theatre for young audiences in their approach to making work with, rather than for, disabled young people.
For this project, Half Moon’s Director, Chris Elwell acted as a mentor and dramaturg for An Unseen World exploring non-verbal creative narratives around unseen barriers faced by disabled people, using design and metaphor as a key communication tool.
Following a period of research and development development work with the partner school, Globe Primary in Bethnal Green, the work-in-progress piece was due to be presented at a sector-wide symposium in Leicester in April 2020. Due to the pandemic, this became an online event and the piece was filmed to share. This filmed version was the basis of the reworked piece, Boxed In.
Have you got a memory you’d like to share? Or perhaps you have a programme or poster from one of our shows that we're currently missing? Then we want to hear from you! The website is a living archive and we will continue to add information as it comes to light.
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