Bitef

Many have said that the South African Truth commission was an evolutionary leap for humanity and mankind. Others have said it was a fruitless dream, a witch-hunt, a betrayal of traditional justice. But for the people who were there it was a theatre of listening with an intensity that jarred them to their core, where a new and perhaps impossible sense of personal justice was explored. This stirring musical drama is a human statement - a universal, unsentimental story of a moment in time when truth, memory, identity and emotional chaos heroically clashed while a nation, different from any other, sought to avoid a bloodbath and construct a national peace on its own terms. The stories of the actual translators are merged with the personal life stories of the actors themselves. The characters are based upon the memories and lives of the actors combined with their interpretations of the stories told by the living interpreters who worked at the Commission for the two and a half years it existed. The actual testimony is word for word and unchanged except for editing. The production is a theatrical memory of a moment in time when a country defied the world's expectation of revenge and vengeance and asked itself - can we REALLY face the past to survive the future. Michael Lessac

SPECIAL PROGRAMME