Remembering The South African Playwright Who Defied Apartheid
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Who was Athol Fugard and what impact did he have?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. As a playwright, actor, and director, Athol Fugard defied South Africa's apartheid system, and the government punished him for it. He died Saturday at the age of 92. We're going to listen back to the interview we recorded in 1986, eight years before the end of apartheid. Fugard was a white South African who wrote about the emotional and psychological consequences of his country's white supremacist system. When Fugard co-starred in his 1961 play The Blood Knot with black actor Zakes Mukai, they became the first black and white actors in South African history to share a stage. Soon after, Fugard was approached by a group of black actors seeking his help to start a company. Together, they formed the Serpent Players. The company was frequently harassed by the authorities. A few members were imprisoned. Fugard's reputation for defiance spread, and in 1967, the government revoked his passport. It was restored four years later.
Fugard wrote more than 30 plays, including Master Harold and the Boys and Bozeman and Lena. He co-wrote the plays Sizwe Banzwe is Dead and The Island with the black South African actors John Connie and Winston and Shana. His plays have been staged in the US. Six of his plays were produced on Broadway. He won a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2011. When I spoke with Fugard in 1986, I asked him why he remained in South Africa, where he lived under the apartheid system he opposed.
What were Athol Fugard's experiences with censorship and apartheid?
I suppose it's a question of my continued existence as a writer. I just couldn't see myself writing about any other place or any other time. I have on occasions in the past described myself as a regional writer, not meaning to be falsely modest or anything like that, but a regional writer in the sense I think that Faulkner was a regional writer in America and my region is South Africa.
Do you feel constrained there at all by limitations of what will be allowed to be performed on stage?
I think I've become so used to living with that danger, with the danger of censorship. And in some ways, the situation today is a lot easier than it was in the past. I mean, I had to contend with a South Africa that was much more authoritarian in terms of its control over the arts than is the case today. where the government has attempted to persuade the outside world that it's moving in a liberal direction by allowing certain things to take place in theatre and in the arts generally, which wasn't the case many years ago. I do not feel constrained. I've learned how to live with that.
Do you ever feel that if your work is not censored, then you're not doing your job?
Yes, there is a terrible – there is the danger of a terrible sort of snobbery along those lines, you know, that if you haven't been banned or if your work hasn't been censored or let's put it even crudely, if you haven't been to jail at least once – Or if you haven't been raided by the security police and searched in the early hours of the morning, you haven't actually earned your credentials. Unfortunately, yes, I think a little bit of that does operate back home.
What do you think is the power of theater or art in general to help topple the apartheid system? Do you think of art in those terms? Do you think of art as having an overt political function?
Well, it obviously does have that. I mean, I, for example, I heard a story about a South African woman who had had very, very strong traditional South African attitudes and who for some reason or the other had been at Yale when I was doing Master Harold, who had come along and seen the play and who had been so affected by that production and who had in fact undergone a change of heart.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
Who was Athol Fugard and what impact did he have?
0:23–2:00
2
What were Athol Fugard's experiences with censorship and apartheid?
2:00–7:34
3
How did Athol Fugard's personal history influence 'Master Harold and the Boys'?
7:34–13:48
4
What were the experiences of working with integrated theater in apartheid South Africa?
13:48–18:45
5
How did Athol Fugard's plays confront racism in South Africa and America?
18:45–23:30
6
What is the legacy of soul singer Jerry Butler?
23:30–26:44
7
What is the story behind Jerry Butler's hit 'Only the Strong Survive'?
26:44–47:23
Speakers
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