Asian Journal- The Filipino-American Community Newspaper

In April 1994, the plane carrying the President of Rwanda was shot down and he was killed. The incident brought to a head the long simmering feud between the Tutsi and Hutus tribes in Rwanda and ignited a three-month genocide in which almost 1 million Tutsis were massacred by the Hutu tribe killers. Immaculee Ilibagiza, a 24-year-old Tutsi woman, survived the genocide by hiding with seven other women in a 3x4 feet bathroom in a Catholic pastor’s house.

For 91 days, Immaculee and the women huddled silently, cramped together in an undiscovered bathroom, emerging only after France sent troops to stop the genocide.

At one of the Los Angeles Theater Center’s four auditoriums, the story of Immaculee’s and the seven Tutsi women’s miraculous survival is being relived in a play entitled Miracle in Rwanda, starring Leslie Lewis-Sword. She co-created the play with Edward Vilga who also directs. It was based on a book written by Immaculee Ilibagiza.

As the spotlights come on, Leslie Lewis-Sword emerges from the darkness of the stage and points to 3x4 rectangular spot defined by strips of masking tape and declared, “This was my hotel in Rwanda. I wish for all genocide survivors to be so blessed.” And for the next 70 minutes, Ms. Sword would throw herself into an acting gig so multi-faceted it involved delineating the roles of seven characters.

She plays Immaculee Ilibagiza, 24, the central character. Sword also plays the role of the Catholic pastor that hid the women in an undiscovered bathroom in his Rwandan home; the role of the killer Tutsi; the other women with her; Juvenal, her family’s murderer; and Pierre, the French soldier. The multiple roles are too complex for one actor to bring to life—but Sword, a graduate of Harvard and UCLA Schools of Theater, Film and Television––pulls it off. Sword, who made her New York-Off-Broadway acting debut playing Dorothy Dandridge at the National Black Theatre in Harlem, is the daughter of FilAm philanthropist and civic leader Loida Nicolas-Lewis.

“What I have decided to do (to address the multiplicity) was to create a physical signature for each character,” she told Asian Journal after a matinee show on Sunday. “It changes for different characters because Immaculee’s physicality changes while she was in that bathroom; so she always have her hands kind of across her stomach, whereas the  (Tutsi) killer always wipes his nose, and the pastor holds the cane (and stoops),” Ms Sword explains.

And how did she acquire the impeccable African accent? “Well, when I adopted my children, it took six weeks for the visa to clear in Kenya, so we spent six weeks in Rwanda and Kenya, just being with the children and living there, and so, while I was there, the acting just came into my bodeee,” she said, affecting a French-African accent. It also helps that she speaks French.

Miracle in Rwanda is the theatrical recreation of Imacculee’s total and unquestioning faith and trust in God during her 91-day forced incarceration in a small bathroom with seven other Tutsi women, hiding from murderous Hutu henchmen who were decimating entire families of Tutsis. But her faith in God hit a bump on occasions: once when she praying The Lord’s Prayer she could not quite bring herself to say “and forgive those who trespass against us…” and she implored, “How can I forgive those who are trying to kill me?” While the killers were here today, I felt like their knives were cutting into my body,” she told Him. “My father is right, I must pray.” And pray she did, reciting the Rosary thousands of times until the day they were allowed to venture out to Rwanda’s streets when the French soldiers had arrived and stopped the genocide.