Colonnades Theatre Lab (South Africa)
The Colonnades Theatre Lab (South Africa) was a project devised to promote the arts and culture in South Africa, specifically performance drama.
Founded as a South African non-profit Section 21 company in 2005, it was dedicated to using the perceptual power of theater as an agent of change in societies moving from conflict to peace. Established as a sister organization to the Colonnades Theatre Lab, Inc. of New York, by the founder of the latter, Michael Lessac. The first undertaking of the organization was to undertake something called the Truth in Translation Project (funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation[1]).
The idea of the Project was to tell the story of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission from the perspective of the interpreters who translated the testimony into the many languages spoken in South Africa. Presented in the form of a play called Truth in Reconciliation (and accompanied by music), the project aimed to highlight the trauma, anger, sadness and healing that accompanied South Africa’s attempt to deal with the political violence and human rights abuses of the apartheid past.
The grant was specifically aimed at enabling the company to take the play to all the areas in South Africa that were still struggling to come to terms with the conflicts of the past, as well as to fund performances for international audiences in conflict-ridden places like Palestine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Northern Ireland.
