News Arts Writer
The Buffalo News
February 5, 2010
Buffalonian Alison Des Forges, considered the foremost expert on the Rwanda genocide, died in the crash of Flight 3407. Harry Scull Jr./Buffalo News.
In the fall of 2008, Allen DeWane Harris saw a performance in New York City that took his breath away.
Actor Leslie Lewis-Sword was starring in “Miracle in Rwanda,” a one-woman play based on the true story of Immaculee Ilibagiza, a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide who narrowly escaped death at the hands of the machete-wielding soldiers who had murdered her family.
Harris, an actor and theater aficionado, was so enthralled by Lewis-Sword’s performance and the heart-wrenching impact of the play that he booked the actress to bring the show to Buffalo in the spring of 2009. He arranged to mount the production at the University at Buffalo, his alma mater, and tapped UB professor Alison Des Forges, an international authority on the Rwandan genocide, to deliver a post-show lecture.
“She said she couldn’t do anything until she got back from Europe in February,” Harris said. “And I guess we all know what happened then.”
Des Forges was one of the 50 people who died aboard Colgan Air Flight 3407, which crashed into a house in Clarence Center last Feb. 12. Her death sent shock waves through the international human rights community, which regarded Des Forges as the major authority on the bloody conflict that tore apart Rwanda in 1994. Her 1999 book “Leave None to Tell the Story” is regarded as the definitive account of the genocide.
Now, Harris has organized an ambitious series of performances, lectures and readings as a tribute to Des Forges and the victims of the Flight 3407 crash. The centerpiece of the series will be three performances of “Miracle in Rwanda” on Thursday, next Friday and Feb. 13 in the Student Union Theatre on UB’s North Campus.
Lewis-Sword, who began work on the play after hearing Ilibagiza speak in 2006, described the show as a story of personal discovery amid unimaginable trauma and strife.
“Instead of focusing on the killing that was happening outside, she went inward and touched the divine within,” Lewis-Sword said.
Ilibagiza’s story is all the more remarkable, Lewis-Sword said, for the fact that she forgave her attackers. She recalled a performance she delivered in Rwanda to a group of students who were children of either victims or perpetrators of the genocide, in which more than 500,000 were killed in the span of just 100 days.
“One of them asked me in the talk-back, ‘Is it really possible to forgive like that?’ For me, that question was so powerful, because I could say yes, it is. This is a true story.”
As part of the program, Harris has also arranged for a visit and talk by Paul Rusesbagina, a friend of Des Forges who saved the lives of more than a thousand Tutsis during the genocide. He is the subject of the Academy Award-nominated film “Hotel Rwanda,” which will screen at 4 p. m. next Friday in the Student Union Theatre. Rusesbagina’s talk will follow the screening.
Before the Feb. 13 performance of the play, the Student Union Theatre will host a screening of the HBO film “Sometimes in April.”
Talks will also be given by genocide survivors Monique Mujawamariya, Aloys Habimana and Victor Habinshuti as well as Boston University professor Tim Longman and UB professors Claude Welch, Shaun Irlam, Bruce Jackson, Diane Christian and Des Forges’ widower, Roger Des Forges.
Following the Feb. 12 performance of “Miracle in Rwanda,” a ceremony will be held to honor the victims of Flight 3407 on the one-year anniversary of the crash.
Harris said that it was regrettable that many people in Western New York did not learn of Des Forges’ internationally important work until her death.
“A prophet is honored everywhere except their hometown, and that’s what I want to change with this program,” Harris said. “I think Buffalo needs to know about her.”
PREVIEW
WHAT: “Miracle in Rwanda” and other events
WHEN: Thursday through Feb. 13
WHERE: University at Buffalo Student Union, UB North Campus, Amherst.
TICKETS: $25 or $10 for students
INFO: www.sa.buffalo.edu/rwanda and www.buffalo.edu/news
cdabkowski@buffnews.com
Related Materials:
Alison Des Forges: Fieldwork
Confronting Evil: Genocide in Rwanda (Video featuring Alison Des Forges)
Civilian Plane Shoot-Downs and International (In)Justice; From 007 to Rwanda
The alleged mystery surrounding the black box of the Rwandan genocide
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