ABSTRACT
The controversial work of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has spawned a number of bold and imaginative theatrical ventures in the post-apartheid period. Among them, Jane Taylor’s Ubu and the Truth Commission (1997), lauded as the ‘touchstone for artful, affecting political engagement’ in the ‘new’ South Africa (Gevisser 1997: 4), has attracted the most critical attention, both locally and internationally. Written in collaboration with artist, film-maker and animator William Kentridge, along with Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler of the Handspring Puppet Company, this multimedia text par excellence deals primarily with those who perpetrated atrocities during the apartheid regime. In doing so, the play enters a politically volatile terrain, asking difficult questions about the moral value and social effectiveness of ‘reconciliation’ as an official nation-building strategy, but refusing to provide easy answers.
