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I've just returned from the Edinburgh Festival, where our crew filmed some productions that will feature in this year's Belfast Festival. Siobhan Savage is producing these segments, which you can see in October as part of our Festival Nights coverage.

, an exploration of the South African truth and reconciliation commission, was conceived by the film and television producer/director Michael Lessac. I spent quite a bit of time with Michael; and we recorded an interview in his apartment in the city. Michael has squeezed four or five distinguished careers into a single lifetime: a Hollywood scriptwriter and film director ("House of Cards"), a network TV director (Taxi, Grace Under Fire, The Naked Truth, etc., etc.), an academic (with a PhD in developmental psychology, he has taught at Columbia University), a singer/songwriter (he toured Europe with an album of original released by Columbia Records), and a lighting and sound designer (at the Dubrovnik Theatre Festival and other venues). His latest project has been described as "12 Angry Men meets A Chorus Line": the story of South Africa's struggle to move beyond its own past is retold through the eyes (and ears) of eleven interpreters whose job at the TRC was to translate evidence into South Africa's eleven official languages. The script emerged from interweaving actual evidence from the Commission with the performers' own experiences, and is brought to life here by a haunting score by Hugh Masekela. This is serious drama: intense, compelling, and ethically charged.

is also performing at this year's Belfast Festival, after another brilliantly successful run at this year's Edinburgh Festival. I saw her show last night, and it was everything I'd been told it would be -- as one critic put it, she is "a minx with Kate Bush looks and a voice to hypnotise a viper". Performing songs by Jacques Brel, Nick Cave and Tom Waits, she romanced, cajoled, arrested and seduced a packed . Then today, we recorded an interview and she did the same thing to our film crew. I wouldn't be surprised if Camille O'Sullivan steals the entire show at this year's Belfast Festival. She'll be performing only twice (and on the same day, October 27).