When a playwright manages to combine a beautifully artistic gift with a deeply meaningful and topical subject, she creates a play perfect for our time.

“I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady from Rwanda,” the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s latest production of Sonja Linden’s play, is just that.

The story of Juliette, an emotionally struggling survivor of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, massacring all of her family and leaving her alone with the demons of her past as a refugee in London, and Simon, a writer and poet, himself struggling with a creative midlife crisis, begins quiet and awkward, as the two cultural and personality opposites begin their path together.

Juliette’s goal is to publish a book about the horrific tragedy of her home country, but is incapable of overcoming the emotional barrier that keeps her from expressing her personal experiences.

Slowly, and surprisingly humorous, both Simon and Juliette affect each other’s lives, breaking through assumptions, misunderstandings and reservation.

Lanise Antoine Shelley (Juliette) gives an outstanding performance. She becomes Juliette, with body and soul, sharing her painful story and reserved, proud, but witty personality with the audience in her many powerful monologues.

Her voice takes the audience to Rwanda, the small stage of the Stiemke Theater disappears in our imagination and we relive both the beautiful and the incomprehensibly horrible memories with her.

Juliette’s story dominates the play, but is wrapped carefully and with an appropriate portion of humor in her growing relationship to Simon.

Playwright Linden, who based this play on her personal experience as a worker in the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture in London, helping a young lady from Rwanda write her story, has created a powerful and important piece.

It is not only a production not to be missed, but more importantly not to be forgotten.

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