Meet Cassius, Kate, Will and Liz.
They’re all good friends. But someone is
missing. Jack. Having died suddenly, his
body is now lying in rest at the city art gallery.
Without him the group begin to fall apart
revealing the source of their deepest fears:
the secrets and lies that make up their lives.
Ordinary people in an extraordinary situation,
Black Box is an electric tale of love, loss, guilt
and forgiveness. Like a mirror held up to the
audience’s face, Black Box offers an
uncompromising reflection that begs the
question: what do we really know about each
other? Moving, witty and brilliantly observed
with razor-sharp dialogue, this is a must-see show.
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“Why can’t people say it how it is? They’re so scared
of being misunderstood that they lie to avoid it.”
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Black Box
Programme Notes
When I’m asked about Black Box I tend to talk in big
brush strokes. It’s about love, loss, guilt and forgiveness. Big themes. All that’s missing is war, peace, and religion. But I don’t apologise as, for me, that’s what life is about: how we love, how we cope with loss, the burden of guilt,
and our struggle to forgive. It’s all there in the mundane details of our lives.
I like to take ordinary people, place them in extraordinary situations and then see what happens. Black Box takes
five friends, has one of them die suddenly, sets the
funeral wake in an art gallery (of all places), and then
sits back and watches the events unfold.
Almost everyone I come into contact with through LeKoa asks me where the name comes from. I lived in Africa
a few years ago and played football for my village team.
I was their first ever white player. When I played the
children would chant “Lekoa, lekoa”. It means “White person, white person”. It wasn’t offensive – it was an observation. I was a white person playing for an African team. An ordinary person in an extraordinary situation.
The name stayed with me.
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LeKoa is a theatre collaborative that I founded in 2002
with a commitment to writing and producing new plays.
I bring collaborators on board for each project in order to build a core group of artists as the company’s work develops. Black Box is the first new play produced by LeKoa.
The script went through a number of stages of development. I wrote the first draft over May and June
of 2002, followed by a two week workshop with actors to tear it to pieces and then re-build it. This was a crucial stage of collaboration in the progress of the play and a method I will use again. I care very much about my
work but I’m not precious about it. If it doesn’t work, it needs fixing.
Even in the final stages of rehearsals the script was
being re-written daily, and I was fortunate to have a
superb cast that was as committed to the script as I am.
And now there’s not much more I want tell you, as everything I want to say is in the play. So I’ll leave it there.
I hope you enjoy it. |
