It was a play that began its life in the back alleys of South African shantytowns before making its way to Broadway, where it and its actors won Tony awards. South African playwright Athol Fugrad created a rough outline for Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, then traveled with his two actors, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, throughout the network of Apartheid-era townships workshopping the play. As South Africa was for all intents and purposes a police state, the writer and actors would perform one night in one village, then move on to the next.

In 1973, the play and its co-creators found themselves in London (but only after the South African government issued Kani and Ntshona passports declaring them to be the domestic servants of Fugard). The play and its companion piece, The Island, were a resounding success, and offers quickly arrived from New York to have them transferred to Broadway. But before they left London, the reigning genius of the English stage, Peter Brook, caught the performances, and later declared them to be "the most extraordinary nights I've spent in the theater."

Now Brook's own production of Sizwe is coming to Prague for a three-night engagement at Archa Theatre. Developed at his theater center in Paris, the Bouffes du Nord, the piece brings Brook to town with two of his own troupe in the roles of Sizwe and Styles, Malian actor Habib Dembélé and the former Congolese rapper and actor Pitcho Womba Konga.

Sizwe's story is quite simple. It starts with Styles, a photographer who hilariously plunges into a tour de force monologue about his acquaintances and clients, jumping from one impersonation to another. Finally, Sizwe walks in, a man in need of help. Apartheid laws were such that blacks had to have special passes to work in various cities. Sizwe's plan is to create a false pass assuming the name of a dead man. But in doing so, he finds himself in an existential crisis — he would become "dead" both to his past and to the present.

It's a powerful piece, packed with humor and tragedy. Although very much a reaction to a now-defunct regime, Sizwe Banzi Is Dead doesn't play like an artifact. As with Vacláv Havel's plays, which reflect the conditions in communist Czechoslovakia, there's an universality to Sizwe that transcends its age. Brook finds that the play perfectly evinces the problems faced by thousands in the Third World today seeking free movement in this global age. Also, it serves as a needed reminder to the outside world of how Africa and its people are still being treated.

The greatness of the play notwithstanding, this production is an excellent opportunity to see the work of Brook, one of the few greats of contemporary theater. Having learned early lessons from Brecht, Grotowski and even Gurdjieff, he has applied them to his own singular aesthetic. From his base in Paris over the past few decades, Brook has created a number of memorable productions, including an astonishing Hamlet, which was certainly one of the most extraordinary nights I have spent in the theater.

Actors trained by Brook are as accomplished in movement as they are in voice. His actors possess such physical clarity that language almost becomes immaterial, if not superfluous, to one's understanding.