New Englanders talk about people being from away, and, boy, were you from away. In your native South Africa you helped found The Market Theatre, the country’s first fully non-racial theatre, which brought indigenous work to a wider audience at a time when doing so took courage. In the same way you have devoted your time at Williams to bridging cultural and artistic differences. You produced cabarets with performers from the college and community. You helped shape the college’s response to the AIDS crisis. You early on directed productions here of Angels in America. You launched a program that immersed our students in the culture and the evolving public policies of South Africa. You took students to theatres around the world. And you served as academic director of what was then called the Multicultural Center, now the Davis Center, with the goal of helping all of our students look at the world differently. Your emphasis has long been on what is called “struggle theatre”—performances with the power to advance social and political causes. This made all the more glorious the day, unimaginable for most of your life, when you drove to the consulate in Boston to vote in the first truly democratic election of the country where your bridge building work began.
I hereby declare you Professor of Theatre, Emeritus, entitled to all the rights, honors, and privileges appertaining thereto.
June 3, 2018
Megamenu Social