Portraying a six-year-old South African girl when you're a 35-year-old Saskatchewan-born woman would seem challenge enough for actress Carmen Grant. Throw in the fact that you're doing so in a one-person show while portraying 20 other characters, and the challenge really begins.

Grant doesn't look at this challenge as a hardship, but rather, as a gift.

"It is a very, very challenging piece, no question," says Grant of her role as Elizabeth in The Syringa Tree, which opens at Manitoba Theatre Centre's mainstage this week. "But it is so. gratifying. I am so grateful to be doing this piece and the number of times I've been asked to do it. It's really, really beautiful."

For the third time in her career, after previous runs in Halifax and Victoria, Grant finds herself as part of the rewarding experience that is The Syringa Tree. Set in South Africa and loosely based on the childhood of playwright Pamela Gien, the play stretches from the early 1960s to the present day, told from the point of view of Elizabeth. The work chronicles the life of Elizabeth, her family and those around them during the turbulent unravelling of South Africa's apartheid regime.

Even though the play may be about a very specific place and the inherent problems of life in that place, Grant feels the beauty of Gien's work is that it can speak to audiences anywhere.

"I think that it has something to do with the basic spirit of humanity that every single other human being on this planet shares," she says. "The one thing - regardless of age, gender, culture, race, spiritual beliefs - that connects us all is our shared humanity."

This is no more apparent than in the assortment of characters Grant plays within the play. She portrays men and women who are Afrikaner, Xhosa and Zulu, all of whom speak through her in ways she never imagined. These characters make The Syringa Tree the rich experience Grant relishes.

"This process has been different from any other process I've gone through in my career as an actor," she says.

"Generally I have a very sort of set way of approaching a character. But with this particular show, all that went out the window and the characters literally dictated to me what their physical embodiments were. I wish I could be very specific with you about how I work on this piece, but I can't be, because I myself don't really even know - it's kind of mysterious. It's a mystifying, wonderful, frightening, gratifying process."