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“Truth in Translation” tour influences audiences … and cast
By MAGGIE I. JARUZEL
“Truth in Translation” — an award-winning play depicting the horrific abuses inflicted upon black citizens during South Africa’s apartheid era — has triggered powerful discussions and emotions from audiences in countries where the play has been staged.
But its most lasting impact might be upon the South African performers themselves.
While traveling with the cast, actress Quanita Adams, 29, has been surprised by the many people she met who provided firsthand information about her deceased grandfather. She says the details have helped create a more accurate picture of the man she never knew.
“I grew up with this mythology of my grandfather. His own kids would constantly sing his praises, but then I would talk with people who were involved in the political forums in the 1980s, when he was working for the government, and they would have a totally different opinion of him,” Adams said.
Her grandfather, Lofty Adams, was a leader of the labor party. Recognized as a “colored” man because of his mixed-race heritage, his job was to ensure that the laws of the apartheid government would be upheld by other “colored” people.
“For many years, I harbored a lot of anger and resentment that someone in my family would have collaborated with the apartheid government,” Quanita Adams said.
However, people she has talked with while a cast member say he was not a collaborator, but someone who was trying to make changes from within the apartheid system. They also said her grandfather was a supporter of the arts for black and mixed-race casts and musical groups.
“Slowly but surely, I’m beginning to see that he was a lot more complex than I had thought,” she said. “I am told that he would have been proud of me.”
The play that has prompted so many conversations for Adams is told from the perspective of interpreters who were hired to travel throughout South Africa for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) from 1996 to 1998. Their job was to translate testimonies from abusers and victims into the nation’s 11 official languages.
The TRC was established to investigate crimes committed during the apartheid era. The committee dealt with human rights violations, amnesty and reparations. Apartheid was a nationalized form of racism that began in 1948 and was not totally abolished until the nation held its first fully democratic election in 1994.
After committing to “Truth in Translation” almost three years ago and then traveling together since its debut in Rwanda in August 2006, the multiracial cast and crew of 13 people have become “like family,” Adams said.
Legally labeled “colored” as a child, Adams often participates in frank discussions about the apartheid era with fellow actors, including Nick Boraine, who is white.
For Boraine, performing in the two-hour musical drama has strengthened his relationship with his father, Alexander L. Boraine, global visiting professor of law at New York University’s School of Law and former deputy chairman of the TRC.
“By the time I left school, I wanted nothing to do with my father’s politics. I just wanted to escape all of that and play psychopathic killers and deranged sexual deviants. I wanted to be anything that wasn’t right because my father had always done what was right,” said Boraine, 35 and married.
“Today, I can say, ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’ I bent right back toward the root. I find myself not only doing political stuff, but doing my father’s political stuff.”
“Truth in Translation” was conceived by Michael Lessac of New York City’s acclaimed Colonnades Theatre Lab. He also is the play’s director.
In 2005, Lessac created Colonnades Theatre Lab-South Africa as a nonprofit organization to promote drama in South Africa. From the start, Lessac also planned to direct productions that could be performed internationally.
The Mott Foundation has provided two grants totaling $270,000 in support of the “Truth in Translation” project since 2006. One grant was given to Colonnades for international performances, and one grant was made to the Flint (Michigan) Cultural Center Corporation, which hosted the cast and crew in September 2007 for shows and workshops in Mott’s hometown.
Adams, Boraine and the other actors say they quickly learned how impossible it must have been for the TRC interpreters to follow the instructions they were given: Remain neutral while translating first-person accounts about human rights crimes.
The performers say their hearts and minds were seared during early rehearsals because of the play’s descriptive dialog and moving music by the renowned Hugh Masekela. Even today, more than 100 performances later, Adams still is affected.
“It’s not easy to sing ‘Teddy Bear’ because the words are ‘Six men stormed into the house and blew off my husband’s head,’” she said.
Without the practical aspects of acting to keep her focused, she would collapse under the weight of her words, Adams said.
“I often can’t open my eyes when I sing it. There are times I want to cry, but I can’t because I have to go right into another scene.”
She, Boraine and the others are keenly aware that the specific incidents that cause conflicts in nations around the globe are different, but the broader issue of prejudiced behavior — based on a person’s race, religion, ethnicity, gender or any other single characteristic — is the same.
One way to address the problem, cast members say, is to provide opportunities for people of all backgrounds to share their experiences — to tell their stories.
Equally important is the lesson of forgiveness, which is highlighted throughout the play. It is a message that has not been lost on audiences, whether they were in Northern Ireland, Rwanda, Scotland, South Africa or one of five stops in the U.S.
“We got to Rwanda and realized we were babies when it comes to understanding how forgiveness works,” Boraine said before describing the chilling tale he heard from a Tutsi teenager who attended the play.
According to Boraine, the girl was only 7 when she saw her family killed by machete-wielding Hutus. Yet, many of her friends today are Hutus who have listened to stories about her painful past.
“She told us, ‘Every day when I wake up, I make a decision to forgive. Sometimes I struggle with that decision, but forgiveness is a verb. It’s a “doing” word. It’s something that you practice every day.’”
Cast members say they learn life lessons by listening to audience members like the Rwandan teen in the “Talk Back” sessions that are held after each performance. They also learn through the interactive community workshops they facilitate on the topic of forgiveness.
Other times, revelations result from hearing the same lines repeated — performance after performance — until they can’t be ignored.
“Sometimes before you walk out on stage, you want to run back to the dressing room, put on your clothes and go have a drink at the bar, because the play deals with a lot of tough stuff,” Boraine said.
“But then you realize, ‘I’ve got to do this play. For the next two hours, I’m right here to tell other people’s stories.’”
The “Truth in Translation” experience is like no other, the cast says. While most have national and international roles to their credit, the play is not just another performance.
The material reaches deep inside actors and touches their private emotions, Adams says, and for that reason it will be difficult for new actors to replace those now traveling when their contracts expire.
“It is about more than just acting. It’s not about just saying the lines or squeezing out the tears when you have to,” Adams said.
“It’s really about having the work live with you.”
The sheer number of performances — coupled with more than a year of traveling far from home and loved ones — has provided time and opportunities for the cast to reflect on the forgiveness process that their nation chose as a path toward healing the wounds of the past.
Although the actors say the TRC hearings were not flawless, most agree they were necessary. They also agree there have been tangible results, including a change in the law so people of color can vote.
“The TRC wasn’t 100 percent perfect,” Adams said. “A lot of people are not satisfied with the outcome, especially when it comes to reparations, but I bring the discussion back to this: I can vote. Thirteen years ago, that would not have been possible.”
Just as a lot has changed in South Africa since its first fully non-racial democratic elections in 1994, much has changed since Boraine met Lessac in New York City a decade later and agreed to be a member of the “Truth in Translation” cast.
Lessac’s vision of sharing the story of forgiveness with people living in post-conflict zones around the globe, such as Northern Ireland and Bosnia and Herzegovina, hit a responsive chord with Boraine.
The actor, who previously appeared in many successful South African and American movies and television shows, has traveled with “Truth in Translation” for more than a year. Now he wonders, “What’s next?”
“I was getting to a stage in my career where I personally needed something more, and I really didn’t know what that was,” Boraine said.
“Then ‘Truth in Translation’ came along. It was so complex and came with a difficult mission to be away from my wife and home for so long. But it wasn’t just the play. It was also doing the workshops and encouraging people to tell their personal stories.
“This play is in a class of its own. Quite frankly, how do you go back to frivolity after this?”