New York City
The Syringa Tree traces the lives of Elizabeth, her family, her nanny, her nanny’s child, and their servants, friends and neighbors from the early years of apartheid in the 1960s to the contemporary post-apartheid nation. The story builds to a tragic climax and a cathartic conclusion, embracing on a human scale the pain and the hope of a complicated national history. The more than twenty characters of the play–men and women, black and white, English and Afrikaan, ranging in age from three to 82–are portrayed by Gin Hammond in this virtuoso piece.