BLACKBOX to Make UK Premiere at Edinburgh Fringe

Andy Jordan Productions and Hindsight Productions will present Blackbox, running August 5–30 (excluding August 17) at Underbelly Cowgate Belly Button at 12:40 p.m. Written and directed by Rickerby Hinds and adapted from the memoir of Henry "Box" Brown, this UK premiere runs 60 minutes. 

A play disguised as a magic show. The true story of one man's impossible escape from slavery transformed into an epic theatrical illusion.

This Edinburgh Fringe sees the UK premiere of Blackbox, a groundbreaking theatrical event by pioneering hip-hop theatre artist Rickerby Hinds. Combining spoken word, gospel music, stage illusion and raw historical testimony, Blackbox tells the extraordinary true story of abolitionist Henry "Box" Brown, the enslaved man who, in 1849, mailed himself to freedom in a wooden crate.

Part play, part magic show, Blackbox theatrically reimagines Brown's daring 27-hour journey from Richmond, Virginia to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in a box measuring just 3 feet by 2.5 feet. Through illusion, movement and music, audiences witness a story of love, loss, faith, resistance and liberation.

Onstage, two performers, Henry the Magician and Spirit, his mysterious assistant, conjure Brown's life into being. As boxes appear, vanish and splinter apart, each illusion mirrors a chapter of Henry's journey: the brutal separation from his wife and children, the psychological horrors of enslavement, and the astonishing act of self-emancipation that would ma3ke history.

Infused with hip-hop poetics, gospel soundscapes and breathtaking theatrical magic, Blackbox transforms theatre into both sanctuary and reckoning - asking audiences not simply to observe history, but to witness liberation as lived, embodied resistance.

After escaping slavery, Henry "Box" Brown became an abolitionist speaker and performer, eventually working as a magician himself. For writer-director Rickerby Hinds, that legacy forms the heart of the production.

Writer/Director Rickerby Hinds said: "A re-envisioning of the box in which Henry spent 27 hours on his way to freedom allows me to address some of the horrors of Henry's life in a 'spectacular' way. Henry Box Brown's story is naturally dramatic, with compelling commentary on slavery, faith, performance and survival."

Hinds, professor of playwriting at the University of California, Riverside, is regarded as one of the founders of American hip-hop theatre. Since the late 1980s, his work has fused the language and aesthetics of hip hop with contemporary stagecraft, inspiring generations of artists and expanding the possibilities of theatrical storytelling.

BLACKBOX premiered at UC Riverside Theater in 2023 and was subsequently selected for Ford's Theatre's prestigious Lincoln Legacy Commissions 2024-2025 season. Its Edinburgh Fringe presentation marks the production's UK premiere.

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