Content provided in partnership with

Encounters with Fugard: native of the Karoo - Athol Fugard Issue

Twentieth Century Literature, Winter, 1993 by Mary Benson

<< Page 1 Continued from page 1. Previous | Next

Yet in Paris a few years later there was a moving recreation of the lives of those two "nameless and destitute" wanderers. Roger Blin, who twenty-five years earlier had directed a play by an unknown Irish playwright, making history by introducing Beckett's En Attendant Godot to the world, had met Fugard in London and explained that, "captivated by Boesman and Lena's humanity and poetry," he wanted to direct the play for his return to theater after a serious illness. I acted as interpreter in this conversation between Blin and Fugard, and later I was able to attend Blin's fine production of Boesman in Paris.

More Articles of Interest: Realizing Fugard - Athol Fugard Issue; A tribute for Athol Fugard at sixty - Athol Fugard Issue; Some problems of a playwright from South Africa - Athol Fugard Issue -...; Fugard masters the code - Athol Fugard Issue; The artist as an outcast and a mother in 'The Road to Mecca.' - Athol Fugard...

Meanwhile, since 1963 Fugard had been working with a group from New Brighton, Port Elizabeth's black township--men and women who, as he once said to me, "hungered for experience in the realm of ideas." Naming themselves Serpent Players they rehearsed, usually in the Fugards' garage, two or three times a week after work teaching in schools, inspecting buses, clerking, and cleaning offices. Their first production was Machiavelli's Mandrake, adapted by Fugard to a township situation and staged in Commedia del Arte style. He wrote to say how fragile was their "newfound excitement and hope and making of meanings." And there was the tension of coping with the security police, who had broken up a rehearsal. Nevertheless the production--according to a local critic--was "A small masterpiece in improvisation. Something new and significant for South African theater." Next came Woyzeck, then The Caucasian Chalk Circle, followed by Antigone. The only assistance Athol ever requested was a sum of twenty-five pounds.

In those years the security police were ruthlessly purging the black townships of the Eastern Cape of all political activity. Three of the Serpent Players' leading actors were swept off to the infamous prison on Robben Island. At this moment two newcomers to the company, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, told Fugard they wanted to become professional actors--a hazardous prospect for black South Africans. Out of their daily lives and his experience during the 1950s of a job as clerk in the Pass Laws Court--"horror unadorned"--the three of them created Sizwe Bansi Is Dead. And out of their comrades' imprisonment came The Island. Both were workshop productions which they hoped would attract local audiences, and which to their astonishment became international successes. For the actors the financial risk had paid off; the political risk remained, however, and in 1976 they were detained in South Africa's Transkei Bantustan. Among the international celebrities whose outrage brought about their release was Patrick White, the great Australian novelist, who sent me a copy of his message to the South African Prime Minister, J. B. Vorster: "In a lifetime of theater-going in London, Paris, New York, Berlin, and Athens, I thought I had seen only three performances of the kind which becomes legendary, until recently in Sydney I was able to add to my short list John Kani and Winston Ntshona in The Island and Sizwe Bansi Is Dead."

Encounters with Fugard: native of the Karoo - Athol Fugard Issue

Twentieth Century Literature, Winter, 1993 by Mary Benson

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Business

Most Popular Articles in Arts

Most Popular Publications in Arts