At seventeen, a girl from a township outside Durban stood on a Broadway stage and performed freedom eight shows a week. The role was Sarafina — a schoolgirl who finds her voice inside the Soweto Uprising. The girl was Leleti Khumalo. But the man who wrote the part also wrote himself into her life in ways that would take thirteen years to escape.

This is a story about surfaces. About a woman who played liberation while living under control. About a skin condition that slowly, visibly rewrote her body while she spent an hour each morning painting it back to what the world expected. And about the moment she stopped painting — and let the nation see what had been underneath all along.

Norman connects Leleti's story to ancient Greek statues, scrubbed white by collectors who mistook the bare marble for the original. The original, it turns out, was always the colour underneath.

• (00:00) - Eight Shows a Week