By Andrew Martin
Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard was born 11 June 1932 in Middelburg in the Eastern Cape. In 1935, his family moved to Port Elizabeth, where he was raised and educated. From 1950, he studied philosophy and social anthropology at the University of Cape Town but left in 1953, a few months before he would have written his final examinations. He and a friend hitchhiked through Africa and spent two years in East Asia on a steamer ship, the SS Graigaur. On his return to South Africa, he worked various jobs in Johannesburg before focusing on theatre as a director.
Fugard was arguably one of South Africa’s greatest playwrights. From his earliest days, he realised the power of theatre as a form of protest against apartheid by conscientising his audience and deliberately exposing the ironies of life under apartheid. Fugard developed a love for Greek classical theatre and the works of William Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett and Berthold Brecht, which he infused into much of his work.
Throughout his career, Fugard was always adamant that his plays could not be performed in front of racially segregated audiences. As a white writer, he could legally only perform his plays at theatres in racially designated spaces. When Fugard returned to Port Elizabeth in the early sixties, he was approached by a group of aspiring young black actors, including John Kani, Winston Ntshona and Nomhle Nkonyenigroup, who asked him to assist them. Fugard agreed to this, and despite the group area’s regulations, passing laws and banning plays, Fugard and his (then) wife and fellow author, Sheila, hosted the group at their home in Schoenmakerskop. Fugard also entered New Brighton illegally for rehearsals and to stage the plays in church halls, most notably St Stephen’s. The group became known as the Serpent Players in reference to the snake pit at the Port Elizabeth Museum, which was one of their venues.
The group embraced his love for classical and contemporary European theatre, producing many plays and often adapting them to localised settings. The group began developing plays in a process that involved a lot of discussion about current affairs and social concerns, as well as developing stories that were interesting, relevant, and likely to draw crowds. Unable to work with elaborate sets and theatre equipment, the group concentrated on the more human aspects of theatre, which led to great rewards. From Fugard’s work with Kani and Ntshona, two of South Africa’s most successful plays emerged – Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The Island.
Sizwe Bansi is Dead (1972) tells the story of a black man who is facing forcible eviction from the city of Port Elizabeth for not having a valid passbook. He finds the dead body of a man who had a valid passbook and takes over his identity by having pictures taken to replace the ones in the passbook. The Island (1973) centres around two political prisoners on an island prison (referencing Robben Island) and their attempt to put on a production of Antigone while in prison, also highlighting some of the conditions to which political prisoners had to endure on the Island. Both plays premiered at the iconic Space Theatre in Cape Town, a small, intimate theatre in Cape Town that was open to multi-racial audiences.
In 1974, Kani, Ntshona and Fugard took Sizwe Bansi is Dead, The Island and Fugard’s play Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act on a British and American tour, performing at London’s West End and Broadway in New York. Such was the impact of Kani’s and Ntshona’s performances in New York; they were both awarded the coveted Tony Award for Best Actor in 1975. These plays continued to be popular in South Africa, often landing the actors in trouble. Kani was even detained for 23 days in 1976.
Fugard enjoyed a successful international career, with his plays being performed around the world, so successfully that a lot of productions never involved him other than him giving production rights and receiving royalties. Post-apartheid, he remained prolific as a playwright, reflecting on some of the challenges of human aspects of change and transition.
In the late 1990s, Fugard lived in San Diego, California, where he taught as an adjunct professor of playwriting, acting and directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego. From 2000 to 2001, he taught at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, where his archive is located. He returned to Cape Town in 2012.
His many plays include Klaas and the Devil (1956), No-Good Friday (1958), The Blood Knot (1961); later revised and entitled Blood Knot (1987), Hello and Goodbye (1965), The Coat (1966), People Are Living There (1968), Boesman and Lena (1969), Sizwe Banzi Is Dead (1972, with Kani and Ntshona), The Island (1972, also with Kani and Ntshona), Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act (1972), A Lesson from Aloes (1978), Master Harold… and the Boys (1982), The Road to Mecca (1984), A Place with the Pigs: a personal parable (1987), My Children! My Africa! (1989), My Life (1992), Playland (1993), Valley Song (1996), The Captain’s Tiger: a memoir for the stage (1997), Sorrows and Rejoicings (2001), Exits and Entrances (2004),
Booitjie and the Oubaas (2006), Victory (2007), The Train Driver (2010), The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek (2016) and Concerning the Life of Babyboy Kleintjies (2022), which was co-written with Paula Fourie.
His only novel, Tsotsi, was adapted into a film, winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2005. Many of his plays were filmed, including his play Master Harold”…and the Boys, an autobiographical play based on his youth in Port Elizabeth. Fugard was an accomplished actor in his own right, and he often acted in his own plays. He appeared with the actress Yvonne Bryceland in the filming of Boesman and Lena, a play based in the Swartkops area of Port Elizabeth, in 1973. In 1991, he joined Bryceland on set again in his play The Road to Mecca, the story of Helen Martins, an iconic artist and creator of the Owl Housed based in Nieu-Bethesda.
He played General Smuts in the Academy Award-winning film Gandhi (1982).
He published a book of short stories, Karoo and Other Stories (2005) and three memoirs, Notebooks, 1960-1977 (1983), Cousins: A Memoir (1994) and The Shadow of the Hummingbird (2014).
He received many awards, honours, and honorary degrees, including the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver from the government of South Africa in 2005 “for his excellent contribution and achievements in the theatre”. Fugard was honoured in Cape Town with the opening 2010 of the Fugard Theatre in District Six. He received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement in 2011. Other awards include the Obie Award for Boesman and Lena in 1971. A Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre and two in 1981 for A Lesson from Aloes and 1988 for The Road to Mecca.
His honorary doctorates include awards from Natal University (1981), Rhodes University (1983), The University of Cape Town (1984), Yale University (1984), Georgetown University (1984), the University of the Witwatersrand (1990), Brown University (1995) Princeton University, (1998) and the University of Stellenbosch (2006)
Fugard had several connections to Grahamstown and Amazwi. His play, Boesman and Lena, was first presented at Rhodes in 1969.
