Let My Enemy Live Long!

One of the treasures of last year’s theater season was Tanya Shaffer’s dramatic account of her trip up the Niger River to Timbuktu. Fresh from a volunteer stint in Ghana and tired of being seen as “a misguided white lady who wants to help,” Ms. Shaffer embarked on a highly unrecommended journey that would bring her in contact with a variety of men, women and children for whom race and privilege have meanings entirely different from hers. The play takes its title from a wise African proverb (think about it) and is brilliantly supported by a percussion and string accompaniment. Ms. Shaffer’s keen observations of the trip, like the battered journal she kept to record them, are a wonderful recreation of the cultural connections made and missed along the way.
20 half-price tickets go on sale at noon Tuesday through Friday for that evening’s performance.