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with emotion, pain and memory. The result, inevitably, is something resembling the Tower of Babel. How, then, did the interpreters deal with such bitterness, chaos and passion? On the stage, the actors just drink their way into therapy. They were always on the road. The only way to decompress was by going to a bar. They did not debrief," said Lessac, which is why the bar is central to the play, "It was at the bar that dark humour came out. It is also where their humanity came out, the chaos locked inside them.'That torrent of feeling is painful, he said, and it is a pain that cries out for healing. Yet, he noted, you can't heal by revenge. I was at the Market Theatre in downtown Johannesburg for a whole Sunday afternoon seeing Jiliian Edelstein's documentary Truth and Lies, about the making of the play. Here the Truth in Translation actors'horror at the genocide is all too palpable. They are overcome with emotion and can't quite put their disgust into words - much like what the translators at the commission may have gone through. "It intensified the production," said Lessac, adding that "it also intensified the feeling that what happened was a truly powerful thing that the rest of the world should know about". Lessac observes that South Africa's transition is so important that it has created possibilities for dialogue throughout the world. After a four-week run at the Market Theatre, the play will tour Colombia, the western Balkansand Northern Ireland. When it was shown in Rwanda, some of the audience came back the following day thinking there would be another episode. Rather strange for a play that is beautiful without being pretty. But then, as Yeats wrote, all has been changed, changed utterly, and a terrible beauty born. Percy Zvomuya »M&G Friday«, Theatre of our times: Talking Truth in Translation A HARD ACT TO FOLLOW Max du Preez spent some time with South Africans who are healing wounds in Rwanda Normal people go to Rwanda to see gorillas. Only sweet NGO types, researchers desperate for a PhD thesis topic and the occasional journalist go there because 11% of the nation was murdered in three months 12 years ago. Rwandans are getting a bit tired of these genocide tourists'tears, their questions and their never-ending workshops. But then a group of South African actors arrived. They also had tears, also asked questions and also attended workshops. This time the Rwandans felt moved, and started really talking. Truth in Translation, a play with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission as its theme, had its international premiere in Kigali two weeks ago. There were two performances in the capital and three in the university town of Butare. Most members of the audiences stayed afterwards to interact with the actors, talking animatedly about truth, justice, revenge and reconciliation. Between shows the cast visited four genocide sites and attended workshops with local school kids,