Genre
First Performance 22/05/2012
Closing 16/06/2012

Machines For Living is a provocative production about housing, communities and segregation, inspired by the architects of the sixties and seventies who believed tower blocks would create urban utopias. It asks urgent questions about social housing, segregation and the urban landscape.  Is the problem the buildings? Or the people in them?

A husband and wife, both architects, believe that the ideal home size is nine square metres and design a tower block accordingly. But as the estate they build falls into disrepair and becomes a notorious no-go zone, riot is in the air and the blame falls on them.

Originating as a ten-minute piece for the Blue Elephant’s scratch night ‘Trunkated’, its thematic concerns have a strong resonance with the local area of the theatre, nestled as it is amongst high-rise tower blocks and just a stone’s throw from Aylesbury Estate, once one of the UK’s most dangerous neighbourhoods.

This is the second theatre production by Let Slip, following the graduation of founder, David Ralfe and Associate Artist, India Banks, from the Jacques Lecoq Theatre School in Paris last year.

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