Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd loved his country. He loved it and his Afrikaner identity so much that when he became prime minister of South Africa in 1958, he invented the blatantly racist apartheid system as a way to preserve the Afrikaner way of life.

	Mary Mervis Doug Pona, left, and John Shepard star in Quantum Theatre's "I.D." Click photo for larger image. 'I.D.' Where: Quantum Theatre at The Pipe Building, 3000 Liberty Ave., Strip District When: Through June 5. 8 p.m. Wed.-Fri.; 5:30 and 9 p.m. Sat.; 2 p.m. Sun. Tickets: $22-$26, students $15. 412-394-3353.

Demetrios Tsafendas would have loved to have loved his country, but it didn't love him. Born to a Grecian father and a mixed-race mother in Mozambique, he appeared to be Caucasian. But through the complex eugenics of apartheid racial demarcation, he was classified "colored" and rejected by both white and black South African cultures. A loner, he roamed without national identity until, through an Oswald-esque quirk of fate, he was hired as a messenger in the South African House of Assembly where, he claimed, he was urged by a tapeworm living inside of him to stab Verwoerd to death.

The 1966 assassination and the troubling concept of warped personal identity inspired South African-raised Sir Anthony Sher, a lauded member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, to chronicle the event in "I.D.," a play that attempts to humanize its three central characters: Verwoerd, Tsafendas and the tapeworm.

"The amazing thing about this play is that the assassin and the victim are two halves of the same coin," says Karla Boos, artistic director of Quantum Theatre. "Both were obsessed with the concept of identity."

Sher created "I.D." with the help of director Nancy Meckler, whose version of "Anna Karenina" was directed by Boos in 2000. That, says Boos, was part of the play's appeal -- she approached Quantum's "I.D." with the same degree of physicality that brought "Karenina" to life.

"It's a tribute to Sher's level of humanity that he was just as fascinated by the prime minister as he was his assassin," she says. "Both were looking for security and some sense of finding a place for themselves in the world."

The strength of Sher's characters gives Boos much to work with.

"This is an epic story about transformation, which lends itself to a very physical approach," she says. "Verwoerd was hideously misguided, with an admiration for Hitler and [a belief] that the Afrikaner people had a mandate from God to be there. Tsafendas speaks very eloquently on his reasons for the assassination of the prime minister, yet he also says the tapeworm made him do it. He was probably mentally ill from the loneliness and frustration of his life. And the tapeworm itself is personified in the play in a very creepy way."

Mark Staley has the honor of adding "Tapeworm" to his professional credits. As the play's musical director, Squonk Opera's Jackie Dempsey gives the character an additional musical dimension.

"The script called for South African music," she says, " and we found [and performed] some to provide atmosphere, and I composed some South African-sounding music for transition scenes. But because the play is so much about identity, we also wanted there to be a musical identity for each character. For the tapeworm, we brought in [Squonker] David Wallace to play these really odd, dark, abstract guitar sounds."

The music of "I.D." was produced by Squonk drummer Kevin Kornicki and funded by a grant from the Heinz Endowment.

For cultural authenticity, Boos and Dempsey relied on the advice of Leswin Laubscher, a Cape Town-raised professor of psychology at Duquesne University. South Africans are aware of Verwoerd's assassination, he says, but the dry historical account overlooks much of the humanity of the people involved. In present-day post-apartheid South Africa, Laubscher says, artistic depictions of the nation's history are filling in the empty spaces.

"Much of it is coming out in the arts, through artists of all kinds," he says. "Certainly, growing up, I was aware of Tsafendas, but after his death in 1999, a biography of his life came out which tells us he was a learned man, involved in politics and detested what Verwoerd stood for. So, was he crazy or was [the assassination] the act of a hero? As this play shows, you can't say either-or."

Curiously, Sher's play about two troubled men's search for identity has had a larger effect on their troubled homeland.

"There's so much nuance involved on both sides of the equation," says Laubscher. "Artistic depictions such as this help South Africans to discover their identity."