The award-winning Karoo Kaarte-team behind Die Swartmerrie returns with a brand-new drama from this project’s research. In Spoel , Oudtshoorn is remembered by the people who learned to look carefully. The play follows four Oudtshoorn residents – photographers and children from families of photographers – whose lives unfolded over generations in front of and behind the lens. From a family studio where people had their only photo taken, to rose gardens, weddings, funerals and street protests, cameras quietly captured the town’s most intimate and turbulent moments. One woman keeps her family’s photographic legacy alive, surrounded by faces that refuse to disappear. Another traces her history in photographs of births, weddings and community rituals. A young political photographer documents resistance and the daily reality of the struggle as a journalist for Saamstaan. An older observer – photographer and writer from one of Oudtshoorn’s oldest coloured families – followed the town’s social, economic and political shifts through his lens over decades, often capturing what history wanted to erase. Born from photographic archives and community collections, Spoel unfolds through physical play, movement and improvisation. Images become memories. Memories become movement. The piece asks who is seen, who is remembered, and who determines the frame. Spoel is both a love letter and a confrontation – a living archive where rural histories breathe, talk back and keep moving.