The Syringa Tree

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The Syringa Tree[1] is a deeply personal memory play of a childhood under apartheid. Written and often performed by Pamela Gien it has received excellent reviews in New York and across the USA as well as in London. [2][3] Also very positively reviewed[4] in Dublin, the play has received several awards.

In the Author’s Note at the front of the play, Pamela Gien writes, “I never imagined I would write The Syringa Tree, and I never imagined I would write about South Africa, the paradise lost into which I was born. The play began in an acting class taught by Larry Moss when he said, “Turn to the person next to you and tell them a story.” Without warning, the image of an attack on my grandparents’ farm, Clova, came roaring into my mind. I had not thought about it for decades. We never discussed it. Clova was lost to us, and I was never taken back to what had been the simple but idyllic place of my childhood holidays. I quickly tried o think of something else to tell when he said to the class, “Don’t censor whatever it is that came into your minds. Tell that story. It will choose you.” I tried to make sense of the murky images and began to mouth the words. The second part of the exercise was to stage the story we had just told. I stood there trembling as though I had an earthquake in my body. I felt terribly vulnerable dealing with my own life. At the end of it, Larry said to me, “You have to write this.”
I had no idea at first what I was writing. I wrote with fear, grief and shame but also with love, joy and a well of remembrance. At first I wrote autobiographically. And then I began to love the freedom of combining those events with the poetry of language and imagery. It developed as a more fictional story, deeply invested with aspects of my life. I chose names of people I loved and who inspired me, but with the exception of the grandparents, whom I have depicted with the most accuracy my young memory at the time allows, all the other characters are built out of inspiration and imagination. The family who lived next door to us, for example, was indeed that of a Dominee but a man very different than the one depicted here, a man I remember as humane and kind, and his daughters were my sweet and first friends. The families depicted here are fictional, and because the play is so personal, I want to make that distinction clear. Another example is the character of Salamina who was inspired by several women who took care of me. They were of different origins, some Sotho, some Xhosa or Zulu, and I’ve tried as much as possible to accurately reflect tribal differences in the language, but some of the sounds were so strong and poetic in my memory that I wanted to include them. The coming together of it is the mystery. I wrote it, never imagining the journey I was embarking on.
The Syringa Tree has been the most profound and surprising gift of my life. It has called me to be the best of myself as a person and as an artist. Carried in this story are my deepest feelings about a hauntingly beautiful place caught in sorrow. It is also a story filled with joy and wishes. Some might come true.”