E-Mail This Article to a Friend South African roots The Syringa Tree grows at the ART BY SALLY CRAGIN

The seed for The Syringa Tree, expatriate South African actor Pamela Gien’s acclaimed one-woman show, was planted in an American Repertory Theatre acting class with director Larry Moss some years ago. The assignment was simple, Gien recalls: tell a story. "Larry said, ‘Don’t censor whatever comes up — it will choose you.’ "

The incident that, she continues, came "rushing to the front of my mind" was something that happened when she was 10: the murder of her grandfather on his farm. "She was horrified," says Moss. "She had not wanted to go back there. She played herself, her mother and father, and her black nanny, Salamina. As she was telling the story, I saw it as a movie and the hair went up at the back of my neck."

By the time she’d finished the performance, many of her ART colleagues were in tears, and Moss was determined that she turn the exercise into a play. "I thought, this is a great actress in a great story." The resulting project, The Syringa Tree, which concerns the abiding love between a white family and a black one who share an abode in a South Africa still gripped by apartheid, debuted at Seattle’s ACT and has since had a North American tour and a lengthy Off Broadway run, during which time it earned laudatory reviews and numerous prizes including an Obie, a Drama Desk Award, a Drama League Award, and an Outer Critics Circle Award.

Now, after a year-long break, Gien is bringing The Syringa Tree back to where it began. Directed by Moss, the one-woman play inaugurates the ART’s South African Festival, which commemorates the 10th anniversary of the fall of apartheid. Gien’s one-woman drama is a multi-generational saga in which the playwright plays two dozen characters, from Afrikaners to Zulus, children to elders. "What Pam tried to do," says producer Matt Salinger, "was show that the soul and spirit of people is more important than the color of the skin."

Gien’s white physician father was widely traveled. "He would hear about what was going on in the townships and police force and army," she says, "so he had a broader view of things" — a view that went beyond state censorship. The result was "a debate at the dinner table that was perhaps a little more far-reaching in terms of exposure."

But knowing about the dire conditions in her country came at a cost for the young Gien, who couldn’t wait to leave home. "My response was to run as far away as I could — to get out and see the world and travel and do what young people do." Her travels led the burgeoning actress to America, and after a couple of years in New York, she came to the ART, where she appeared in 14 shows, including Uncle Vanya, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, The Miser, and The King Stag, in the 1980s. Colleague Thomas Derrah isn’t surprised that she’d end up performing two dozen parts in her own play. "She has an enormous range. She can play innocent and girlish to vampish and wild. She could play a million characters."

Gien has made only one trip home to South Africa since leaving, but the ART engagement is the prelude to perhaps the most important performance The Syringa Tree will ever have: a run at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town next spring. "This is a really exciting moment for me," she says, "because I’m back at ART, which is my home, and then I go back to South Africa. I think it will be an emotional and joyful experience."

The Syringa Tree is presented by the American Repertory Theatre as part of its South African Festival at the Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle Street in Harvard Square, December 30 through January 16. Tickets are $36 to $72, $12 for students; call (617) 547-8300. or visit www.amrep.org.