Kani enters the belly of the beast

"Don't you think I ever wanted to come here."

It is strange to hear this from an artist as enthusiastic and indefatigable as John Kani. But the theatre legend and anti-apartheid activist is not one to mince his words.

"I combined this institution with that ugly image of the apartheid system," Kani said this week of Cape Town's Artscape Theatre Centre, which was renamed from the Nico Malan Theatre Centre in 2001.

"I hated this institution, exactly as I hated the police, because it never allowed me in."

Next month, Kani will make his mark for the first time on the theatre he once despised, acting in and directing his 2014 play, Missing ..., and directing his 2002 play, Nothing But the Truth.

In Missing ... Kani will work with the same cast that recently took the play to Bogota in Colombia.

For Nothing But the Truth, he will direct TV personality Sizwe Msutu and two young actors, Milisa Siswana and Tankiso Mamabolo.

The latter play, which grapples with the aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has been widely performed, especially after it became a matric setwork in 2009.

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But this performance, directed by the playwright himself, at a once-segregated institution 20 years after the TRC, feels momentous.

This was because the TRC "put a Band-Aid around the country", leaving questions unanswered and wounds unhealed, said Kani. "Some part of me is unfulfilled, still waiting for some kind of settlement."

Although he supported the commission, Kani could not come to terms with the murder of his brother in 1985.

"I could explain to the community why [reconciliation] was a most important move, but when I went home and asked myself: 'Do you forgive?' I wasn't prepared to answer that question."

He channelled his anguish into Nothing But the Truth, which won a Fleur du Cap award for best new South African play in 2003.

History loomed large this week at rehearsals, where Kani emphasised the need to load every utterance with background and context.

"The actor is the violin and the words are the music you play," he told the actors.