Fugard, Athol

Fugard, Athol (Athol Harold Lanigan Fugard) (ätōl` fy`gard, f–), 1932–, South African playwright, actor, and director. In 1965 he became director of the Serpent Players in Port Elizabeth; in 1972 he was a founder of Cape Town's Space Experimental Theatre. One of the first white playwrights to collaborate with black actors and workers, Fugard writes of the frustrations of life in contemporary South Africa and of overcoming the psychological barriers created by apartheid. Some of his works, such as Blood Knot (1960), the first in his family trilogy, were initially banned in South Africa. Widely acclaimed, his plays include Boesman and Lena (1969), Sizwe Bansi Is Dead (1972), A Lesson from Aloes (1978), the semiautobiographical work Master Harold … and the Boys (1982), The Road to Mecca (1985), and Playland (1993). In his first two postapartheid plays, Valley Song (1995) and The Captain's Tiger (1998), Fugard addresses rather personal concerns, but in Sorrows and Rejoicings (2001) he focuses on the complex racial dynamics of South Africa's new era. Fugard has also written one novel, Tsotsi (1980).

Bibliography

See also his Notebooks 1960–1977 (1983) and Cousins: A Memoir (1998).

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Fugard, Athol (Harold Lannigan)

(born June 11, 1932, Middleburg, S.Af.) South African playwright, director, and actor. He wrote two plays before The Blood Knot (1961), a penetrating analysis of apartheid, established his international reputation. He resumed the theme in Hello and Goodbye (1965) and Boesman and Lena (1969; film, 1973, with Fugard as Boesman). He experimented with an imagist approach to drama in Orestes (1971) and three other works, then returned to more traditionally structured plays. His “Master Harold”…and the Boys (1982), The Road to Mecca (1984), and My Children! My Africa! (1989) were acclaimed in London and New York City. Fugard acted in the films Marigolds in August (1980), Gandhi (1982), and The Killing Fields (1984).