Fugard at the Fugard

The first time I heard the name "Athol Fugard" was in  the early 80's when I saw Danny Glover perform on Broadway in one of Fugard's most famous plays, Master Harold and the Boys. The play, banned from production in South Africa, won the Drama Desk Award that year for Outstanding New Play. It was my first real glimpse into South African politics and the cruelty of apartheid.


I would have been satisfied to just see a Fugard play in South Africa, ... but to see 82 year old Fugard himself at the Fugard Theatre on his triumphant return to the stage after an absence of 15 years in a play he wrote and directed? Home run!



Vince and I saw him in The Shadow of the Hummingbird, his latest and sold out production in Cape Town, straight from its sold out run at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut. In the play, Fugard takes on the role of Oupa, a retired South African teacher living in self-imposed exile in Southern California, and is joined onstage by a young South African named Marviantoz Baker who plays his grandson, Boba.  Athol Fugard's writing  has moved from the political to the emotional. This is a play about love, as Fugard notes, “This is the most naked statement I have ever made about that mysterious emotion.”

Athol Fugard was born in 1932 in Middleburg, in the Karoo. He has written close to 40 plays, four books and several screenplays. Many of his works were turned into films, including Tsotsi, based on his 1980 novel, which won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. His writing spans the history of apartheid in South Africa through the first democratic elections and into present day post-apartheid South Africa.

In 1958, Fugard organised "a multiracial theatre for which he wrote, directed, and acted", writing and producing several plays for it in the area known as District Six in Cape Town. The 335-seater Fugard Theatre is located within the historic Sacks Futeran building in the same district, with the renovated Congregational Church Hall in Caledon Street as its entrance.

Although he stills travels extensively, as of 2013, he considers the Karoo village of Nieu-Bethesda as his permanent home.

they serve Athol Fugard's signature wine in the lobby

PS for pre-theatre dining we chose the Dias Tavern, right across the street from the Fugard Theatre ... great chicken peri peri and grilled baby calamari tubes. Bravos all around!

PPS The Shadow of the Hummingbird is coming to Joburg's Market Theatre in August.