Presented by Arts House and Melbourne International Arts Festival

High Performance Packing Tape is the OH&S nightmare that transforms everyday stationery and office consumables into the infrastructure of one person’s physical ruin. Performer Lee Wilson scales collapsing towers, hangs precariously from bridges unable to carry their weight and asks more of cheap materials than they're ever able to give.

Pivoting deftly between visceral terror and the ridiculous, this masterclass in contemporary performance needles at our desire for self-preservation and material wellbeing with a series of scenarios that each ratchet up the tension another notch. The sterile language of workplace safety, risk assessment and best practice is thrown to the wind, and though the suspense might be killing you, it's Wilson's neck that's on the line.

“Lee Wilson’s worker is indefatigably industrious, skilled, inventive and risk-taking, facially expressionless, never a clown in this serious circus of the working life.” Realtime

“Danger lies in the show's seeming recklessness, yet everything is executed with total conviction” Sydney Morning Herald on Whelping Box

Duration: 60 mins

Warning: Nudity, strobe lighting, smoke effects

Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible
Audio Described performance Fri 4 Oct, 8.30pm
Visual Rating 75 - Minimal dialogue, background audio, music or sounds or fully open captioned/ subtitled

Collaborating artists: Lee Wilson, Mickie Quick, Mirabelle Wouters, Phil Downing, Antek Marciniec (consultant)
Producer: Harley Stumm – Intimate Spectacle

Supported by: High Performance Packing Tape was commissioned by Performance Space for Liveworks 2018 and is supported by City of Melbourne through Arts House.

Branch Nebula is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, and by the NSW Government through Create NSW

Image by: Tristan Still