Athol Fugard

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Harold Athol Lannigan Fugard

Born June 11, 1932 (1932-06-11) (age 76)
Middelburg, South Africa
Occupation Novelist and Playwright
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Harold Athol Lannigan Fugard (b. June 11, 1932, Middelburg, South Africa), better known as Athol Fugard, is a South African playwright, actor, and director. His wife, Sheila Fugard, and their daughter, Lisa Fugard, are also writers.

Contents

[edit] Overview

Athol Fugard was born of an Irish Roman Catholic father and an Afrikaner mother. He considers himself an Afrikaner, but writes in English to reach a larger audience. His family moved to Port Elizabeth soon after he was born. In 1938, he was enrolled at the Marist Brothers College — a Catholic primary school (although he is not known to be a Roman Catholic). After being awarded a scholarship, he enrolled at the local technical college for his secondary education. He then enrolled in the University of Cape Town but dropped out. He sailed around the world working on ships (mainly in the Far East).

Fugard married Sheila Meiring, now known as Sheila Fugard, then an actress in one of his plays, in September 1956. She later became a novelist and poet in her own right. They started the Serpent Players in Port Elizabeth before moving to Johannesburg where he was employed as a court clerk.

Working in the court environment and seeing how the Africans suffered under the pass laws provided Fugard with a firsthand insight into the injustice and pain of apartheid.

Working with a group of black actors (including Zakes Mokae), Fugard wrote his first play No Good Friday. Returning to Port Elizabeth in the early 1960s, he worked with a group of actors whose first performance was in the former snake pit of the zoo, hence the name The Serpent Players.

The political slant of his plays bought him into conflict with the government. In order to avoid prosecution, he started to take his plays overseas. After Blood Knot, was produced in England, his passport was withdrawn for four years. In 1962, he publicly supported an international boycott against segregated theatre audiences which led to further restrictions.

He worked extensively with two black actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona and workshopped three plays viz. Sizwe Banzi is Dead, The Island and Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act.

The early plays workshopped with Kani and Ntshona were staged in black areas for a night and then the cast moved to the next venue – probably a dimly lit church hall or community centre. The audience was normally poor migrant labourers and the residents of hostels in the townships. The plays at this time were political and mirrored the frustrations in the lives of the audience. Fugard's plays drew the audience into the drama, they would applaud, cry and interject their own opinions. Fugard used feedback from the audience to improve the plays – expanding the parts that worked and deleting the ones that did not.

For example in Sizwe Banzi is Dead, migrant worker Bansi can only survive by assuming someone else's identity and getting the important apartheid pass in order to get a job. When he debates how Sizwe would effectively “die” and whether the sacrifice would be worth it, the audience would cry out “Go on, Do it,” because they appreciated that without a pass you were effectively a non-entity.

Sets and props were improvised from whatever was available which helps to explain the minimalist sets that productions of these plays utilise. In 1971, the restrictions against Fugard were eased, allowing him to travel to England in order to direct Boesman and Lena. Master Harold...and the Boys, written in 1982 is a semi-autobiographical work.

Fugard showed he was against injustice on both sides of the fence with his play My Children! My Africa! where he attacked the ANC for deciding to boycott African schools as he realised the damage it would cause a generation of African pupils. With the demise of apartheid, Fugard's first two postapartheid plays Valley Song and The Captain's Tiger focused on personal rather than political issues.

His plays are regularly produced and have won many awards (see below). Some have been filmed. Fugard made his directorial debut in 1992 with the film version of The Road to Mecca. In 2006 the film Tsotsi, based on his novel of that name, won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

Iain Fisher has broken his plays into the following periods: [1]

  • The Port Elizabeth Plays
    • The Blood Knot 1961
    • Hello and Goodbye 1965
    • The Last Bus 1969 and Friday's Bread on Monday 1970
    • Boesman and Lena 1969
    • Master Harold...and the Boys 1982
  • The Township Plays
    • Klaas and the Devil 1956 and The Cell 1957
    • No-Good Friday 1958
    • Nongogo 1959
    • The Coat 1966
    • People are Living There 1968
  • Exile and other Worlds
    • Orestes 1978
    • Dimetos 1975
    • The Drummer 1980
    • A Lesson from Aloes 1978
    • The Road to Mecca 1984
    • A Place with the pigs: a personal parable 1987
  • The Statement Plays
    • Sizwe Bansi is Dead 1972
    • The Island 1973
    • Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act 1972
  • My Africa
    • My Children! My Africa! 1989
    • My Life 1992
    • Playland 1993
    • Valley Song 1996
  • Sorrows and Rejoicings
    • The Captain's Tiger 1999
    • Sorrows and Rejoicings 2001
    • Exits and Entrances 2004
    • Booitjie and the Oubaas 2006
    • Victory 2006

Stephen Grey uses alternative categories: [2]

  • Apprenticeship (up to 1957)
  • Social Realism (1958 to 1961)
  • Chamber Theatre (1961 to 1970)
  • Improvised Theatre (1966-1973)
  • Poetic Symbolism (1975 onwards)

[edit] Plays

[edit] Books

[edit] Films of his plays

[edit] Films appeared in

[edit] Awards

[edit] References

  1. ^ Fisher, Iain. "Athol Fugard plays". Retrieved on 2008-03-11. 
  2. ^ Fisher, Iain. "Athol Fugard". Retrieved on 2008-03-11. 
  3. ^ Fugard, Athol (28). Tsotsi (Trade paperback) (in English), New York: Grove Press, 256. ISBN 0-8021-4268-0. Retrieved on 7. 
  4. ^ Fugard, Athol (2). Tsotsi (Paperback) (in English), Edinburgh: Cannongate Book, 240. ISBN 1-84195-566-3. 

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Persondata
NAME Fugard, Athol
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fugard, Harold Athol Lannigan (birth name)
SHORT DESCRIPTION South African playwright
DATE OF BIRTH June 11, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Middleburg, South Africa
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH