Recess Feature

When someone throws around the term “documentary,” chances are the following word will be “film,” maybe “radio” if the conversation concerns public radio programming. But because of the efforts of Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies, including this month’s Documentary Speakers Series, the phrase “documentary writing” should soon look far more familiar.

Post-apartheid South Africa sets the stage for MoLoRa, a Farber Foundry Theater production presented by Duke Performances. This tale of vengeance and suffering is adapated from an ancient Greek tragedy, Aeschylus’s Oresteia, and updated in the context of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission tribunals, where­ apartheid victims would face their tormentors.

Anne-Maria Makhulu was never much of a couch potato and had never seen The Wire. But when at a conference a few years ago she overheard mentor Judith Halberstam, an English professor at the University of Southern California, having an animated conversation about the show, she decided that it must be worthy of a viewing. She took it with her as her only company while finishing a book manuscript in New York City. And it was then that she thought she had to teach a course on this.