The Syringa Tree

The Syringa Tree is a personal, deeply evocative story of an abiding love between two families, one black, one white, and the two children who are born into their shared South African household in the early 1960s. Spanning four generations, the story is told first by six-year-old Elizabeth Grace, as she tries, with humor and sometimes palpable fear, to make sense of the chaos, magic, and darkness of Africa. By transforming from black to white, from old to young, from Xhosa to Afrikaans to Zulu to Jewish — inhabiting twenty-four characters, playwright/performer Pamela Gien reveals the complexities of her characters’ dreams, struggles, losses, and laughter.