The Syringa Tree

Pamela Gien’s deeply evocative story of an abiding love between two families, one black, one white, The Syringa Tree introduces two children who are born into their shared household in early 1960’s South Africa. This powerful one-woman show evolves through the eyes of a child as she tries to make sense of the chaos, magic, and darkness that marked South Africa under Apartheid, and then spans four decades to bring us to the “freedom” of the present day. Jill Bari Steinberg plays twenty-four very different characters, and through her turn-on-a-dime transformations, she reveals not just the complexities of their world, but their shared humanity as well