TRUTH

JEFF BARBEE/BLACK STARHe says he now sees that even the Ph.D. inpsychology, which he had long considered awasteful detour, has impacted his method oftraining actors, in which they learn to shifttheir gazes and see the part of another person’sface that is old, that is young, that isevil, that can be loved. “Acting becomesreacting.”“I think,” says Eldridge, “what he’s doingis teaching.”Lessac, like many artists and scholarsaround the world, sees South Africa’s TRCas a great success story: “The place was supposedto blow itself up. The whole worldwas waiting for it.“I still believe that something very specialhappened because they just had theballs to put it on the table and tell theirstories.”Admiring the TRC has become a cottageindustry of sorts, says Associate Professor ofHistory Tim Burke, Swarthmore’s Africanhistory scholar. “You can feel overwhelmedby the amount of attention it’s drawn. ThereMichael Lessac is a man whohas found his message to theworld and wants nothing morethan to pass it along.are so many people writing about it, somany people concerned about it; there arebooks and plays and poems.”“One of the reasons it has attracted somuch criticism and so much interest andappreciation is that it is unprecedented inmultiple ways. The nature of transition fromcolonialism to postcolonialism in Africa hasbeen pretty close to universally unsatisfyingand has led mostly to unsatisfying results.Given that context, it would have been a terribleidea to do it [in South Africa] as everyoneelse had done it.”But the TRC, unique as it may be, is mostwidely admired from afar, says Charles Villa-After Swarthmore, Lessac (above, atJohannesburg’s Market Theatre) earneda Ph.D in psychology—a subject hetaught at the college level until 1974,when he started the Colonnades TheaterCompany in New York. Later, he was asuccessful television director, with morethan 200 shows to his credit.Vicencio, director of the Institute for Justiceand Reconciliation in Cape Town, SouthAfrica, and formerly the head researcher forthe TRC. Its lower standing among SouthAfricans somewhat contradicts the commission’shigh stature abroad and has left it vulnerableto criticism—most notably the complaintthat the TRC should have focused lesson truth-telling and more on allocatingcompensation, says Burke. Meager reparations,over which the commission had onlythe power to offer recommendations—andthe slow pace of land reform, which is stillunderway—are frustrating to many SouthAfricans, adds Burke.december 2006 : 21