Opera star Pauline Malefane is perhaps the greatest success story to have come out of the vast, impoverished South African township of Khayelitsha. She has sung in theatres and concert halls from New York to Tokyo. And today she is the joint founder of a Cape Town theatre company that aims to tap South Africa's rich choral tradition, and the wealth of other artistic talent in the townships, to create a new kind of accessible drama, breaking down barriers between South Africans and helping to build a sense of nationhood. When we meet she is visiting Manyano High School in the sprawling Cape Town township where she grew up, to conduct an impromptu singing masterclass. As she bounces lightly on the balls of her feet, the soprano notes that have captivated audiences all over the world fill the small, bare classroom. Four rows of young faces stare back at her, a mixture of admiration and intense concentration. These teenagers are the heirs to the South African tradition of communal singing that incredibly attracts as many people to choir festivals here as it does to football matches. Rejuvenation Pauline's theatre company, Isango Portobello, is based nearby in a new theatre - named after the legendary South African playwright Athol Fugard. It opened earlier this year in District Six, the once vibrant, multi-ethnic district that was bulldozed by the apartheid authorities in the 1960s to achieve racial segregation in Cape Town, but is now slowly coming back to life. "Claiming it back is very important, and very important to the company," the Fugard's co-founder, Mark Dornford-May tells me. He hails from Yorkshire but has lived in South Africa for more than a decade. "It gives a spiritual sense to what we're trying to achieve. We have to create, we have to help this new nation - and it is a new nation because before it was split into so many groups." But as well as aiming to help change how South Africa sees itself, the Fugard Theatre and its resident company, Isango Portobello, is about transforming individual lives. And few have been transformed more than Pauline Malefane's.