The Colonnades Theatre Lab US & SA and The Market Theatre, Johannesburg present

Truth in Translation

Limited availability in 2008

Medium scale

Can we forgive the past to survive the future?

The people of South Africa were asked this question in the wake of apartheid. For a moment in history they said, ‘Yes’. And for that moment they broke a cycle of revenge, prevented a blood bath, and made space for change.

Fringe-First winning Truth in Translation tells the harrowing and uplifting story of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission through the eyes of the interpreters who translated the testimony of both victims and perpetrators into South Africa’s 11 official languages. They were given a mandate to remain uninvolved, but because they translated simultaneously in the first person, they absorbed everything. They became every side of every testimony, embodying every truth and every lie. They became witnesses for whom denial was not an option. By what they thought would be a simple act of translation, these young people found themselves in a quest for their own identities. They became not just translators but true interpreters, not only of their nation’s story, but of their own humanity, their own frailty, and their own untapped source of grace, humour and courage.

With a hauntingly beautiful original music score by the legendary South African jazz musician Hugh Masakela, the premiere of Truth in Translation opened to critical acclaim at the Market Theatre Johannesburg in September 2006. A real hit at the Edinburgh Festival, winning a Fringe First, a Music Theatre award for Hugh Masakela's music and a clutch of 4 star reviews, the work’s international pilgrimage – it has already toured to Rwanda and moves on to other conflict zones in 2008 - tells the story of how a broken but unbowed people made a small evolutionary leap to heal their country.