Boxes is a 30-minute social justice theatre project devised by international award winning theatre-makers Ameera Conrad and Neil Coppen, journalist Daneel Knoetze, and performers Quanita Adams and Mark Elderkin.

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Boxes centers around a young Cape Town couple: Kaye (Qunaita Adams) and Lawrence (Mark Elderkin) who had recently moved into the inner-city of Cape Town. They find their preparations for a housewarming dinner derailed when Lawrence announces he has accepted a job offer to design a state of the art residential development in lower Woodstock. When it is discovered that local residents will be evicted from their neighborhood to make room for the development, Kaye begins to probe the repercussions of her partner's latest architectural venture. 

 

As Kaye and Lawrence battle it out, we learn of Kaye’s interactions with her aunt Sumaya in the Bo Kaap, who due to rising rates is forced to sell her family home, and in the process has returned to her activist roots. As Kaye and Lawrence attempt to arrive at some sort of resolve before the arrival of their dinner guests, audiences encounter a myriad of characters including property developers, politicians, residents and whistleblowers whose lives are impacted, for better or worse, by the gentrification trends sweeping across the city and suburbs. Over the course of four short scenes, Boxes probes the legacy of Apartheid spatial planning and forced removals, examining past and present notions of ‘development’ and ‘progress’ by interrogating the question: Who is really benefiting from all this?