50 Boxes of Earth

Q imports earth from their homeland to grow peculiar plants in a community garden, cultivating a little plot of home in this new land. Jon, the community garden manager, doesn’t trust this mysterious immigrant or their foreign dirt. But much to his terror, Jon’s eleven-year-old daughter is intractably drawn to the enigmatic Q and their unearthly garden. A creative response to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Fifty Boxes of Earth asks us to consider the heavy costs of leaving a home to put down new roots.

This is a play that is just as magical as it is grounded in necessary truths for our time. Truths about taking care of each other and the land. It’s about both learning from our most ancient past through the mistakes and traditions of our ancestors and looking forward to how we can make a better future for the next generation. We’ll see the power of connection to ancestors, connection to land, fear of the other, and desperate familial love explode into a transformative, queer garden.

This production of Fifty Boxes of Earth is dedicated to Ankita’s Dadi, Uma Raturi. And to every grandmother who has provided stability in times of transition.