NY Public Library's Artistic Producer Evan Leslie on SARAFINA

BroadwayWorld.com continues our exclusive content series, in collaboration with The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which delves into the library's unparalleled archives, and resources. Below, check out a piece by Evan Leslie, Artistic Producer for The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts on Sarafina:

On September 25, 1987 at New York City's Lincoln Center Theater (LCT), a cast of 24 young South Africans, none older than 25, wearing matching bowler hats, ties, and uniform blue sweaters, shared the story of high school students involved in the Soweto Uprising. Singing in Zulu and dancing toyi-toyi, they reveled in a culture their home country's government fiercely tried to suppress. With a score that fused traditional South African music with American pop and jazz, Sarafina! the new musical by Mbongeni Ngema, brought the struggle of black South Africa to life for New York and the world.

This month The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts hosts a Community Works NYC exhibition entitled harlem is...THEATER, which commemorates this historic moment of collaboration between New York and South Africa.

Sarafina's journey to Lincoln Center started in Harlem. In 1986, following the advice of Harold Prince, LCT's new director Gregory Mosher went to Harlem's New Heritage Theater Group to observe a rehearsal of Asinimali!, a new play about political prisoners by a courageous, young South African, Ngema. Moved and inspired by the innovation, boldness, and power of Ngema's work, Mosher began discussions with the playwright and Voza Rivers, New Heritage's director, about bringing black South African theater works to Lincoln Center. A year later, LCT presented ''Woza Afrika!'' a month-long festival of plays by and about black South Africans. In 1987, the presentation of Ngema's groundbreaking musical Sarafina! became the culminating accomplishment of LCT's focus on South Africa, leading to a successful Broadway run, and inspiring a 1992 feature film adaptation starring Whoopi Goldberg.

The New York Public Library's collections document the difficult process of bringing Sarafina to America. In The Lincoln Center Theater Records one can read the negotiations the company had with Actors Equity, as they hammered out an usual arrangement that allowed over a dozen foreign, child actors to work on a New York stage. LCT also worked through tense negotiations directly with the South African government to enable Ngema's participation in the American production. The triumphant success of the production is also captured in NYPL archives, with rare posters, souvenir programs, rave reviews, and a draft script of the 1992 Sarafina film.

Today, it is empowering to learn more about Sarafina's journey to Lincoln Center and to remember theater's power to provoke change and understanding. In an essay for the Community Works NYC's harlem is...THEATER Commemorative Journal, Gregory Mosher explains the enduring meaning of Sarafina's success:

"Sarafina crystallized a moment in the world's history, as plays sometimes do - think The Cradle Will Rock, Hair, or Angels in America. In each case exuberant artistry aligned with horrific social-political circumstances to make art, and also more... To hear the kids in the show sing the rollicking 'Bring Back Nelson Mandela' hundreds of times, to hear the audience singing along, and then to watch the great man emerge, not long after the Broadway run, smiling and unbowed from 27 years of brutal incarceration was very, very special... They caught the moment."