{"id":307,"date":"2016-02-12T14:46:29","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T14:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/2\/?p=307"},"modified":"2022-05-29T09:46:27","modified_gmt":"2022-05-29T09:46:27","slug":"athol-fugard-a-new-theatre-named-in-his-honour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/2\/athol-fugard-a-new-theatre-named-in-his-honour\/","title":{"rendered":"Athol Fugard: A New theatre named in his honour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interviewed by Brent Meersman<\/strong>[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

\"Athol
Athol Fugard (with the key of the Fugard Theatre) and Trevor Manuel \u00a9 Roger Bosch<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Athol Fugard can\u2019t bring himself to say the name of the new theatre named in his honour. \u201cI\u2019m just going to call it the District Six Theatre,\u201d he says, pen in hand to autograph a copy of his Notebooks<\/b>. For just under an hour, we have been sitting in the front row of the Fugard. For the past half-century, Fugard, reputedly the most performed playwright in the world after Shakespeare, has chronicled the realities of life in South Africa.<\/i><\/p>\n

Starting with the earliest surviving text, No-Good Friday<\/b>, performed in the Bantu Men\u2019s Social Centre in Johannesburg in 1958, Fugard has shown not only our wickedness, but also the soul beneath still struggling to this day to free itself, and to blossom in common cause with all who live in this land.<\/i><\/p>\n

A spry 78-year-old, his compelling stentorian voice carries his robust being more than ever. His zest for life is infectious. The man and his plays are in this respect at one. He trips up the stairs on to the stage to chat to ensemble members of the <\/i>Isango Portobello theatre company who have just arrived to warm up for their evening performance. Fugard enthuses with them, asks about the marimbas, tells the women how beautiful they are. \u201cI could fall in love with you, and you,\u201d he laughs. \u201cAnd [President] Zuma has given me permission!\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Fugard lives in San Diego to be near his one and only daughter and grandson. He starts every day by reading the South African newspapers. The Mail & Guardian \u201cnot to flatter you, but it is an essential one\u201d, he says. From Die Burger he chooses two news reports, which he reads aloud to himself to \u201ckeep my tongue nimble with my mother\u2019s language, Afrikaans.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Fugard is in Cape Town to direct the world premiere of his latest play, The Train Driver<\/b>. He says it is his darkest work.<\/i><\/p>\n

Athol Fugard<\/b>: There wouldn\u2019t have been this play if it hadn\u2019t been for the Mail & Guardian<\/i> carrying a story about that lady who committed suicide on the railway line. I read it online in America and I dedicate the play to her, Pumla Lolwana and her three children. I knew that I had an appointment with that story in some way or the other and for the longest time after first reading it, because the Mail & Guardian<\/i> carried it in December 2000, I tried in different ways to deal with her. I knew I hadn\u2019t dealt with it in the way that it had to be dealt with. But then finally, I put it aside. I don\u2019t know why or what made me come back to it, but I did, and I suddenly saw that I wanted to deal with that whole incident from the perspective of the train driver, the man that actually drove the train. It\u2019s going to be on the stage in three weeks time.<\/p>\n

\"Marius
Marius Weyers and Christo Davids in Booitjie \u00a9 Courtesy of the Baxter Theatre<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Brent Meersman: You have always been incredibly prolific. Does writing become easier?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

AF:<\/b> No, it gets harder. Writing one play never helps you to write the next one. They somehow all come with different demands, require a different approach, involve a different perspective. It\u2019s almost like having to learn the craft all over again. Well there is one craft you don\u2019t have to learn\u2015I know that I have over time, developed an ear for dialogue.<\/p>\n

BM: This is the premiere you\u2019re directing, so are you making changes to the script?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, yes! The actors are helping me discover the possibilities of enrichments all the way through the text. I have worked with Sean [Taylor] as a director; I\u2019ve not only worked with Owen Sejake also as a director, but I have been on stage with him. I know the heart of Owen Sejake is so big. I\u2019m working with two men I love; what could be a greater gift for a director?<\/p>\n

I think the most recent performance you gave was Valley Song<\/i>?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Was it Valley Song <\/i>[Royal Court, 1996]?<\/i> Was it Captain\u2019s Tiger <\/i>[State Theatre, 1997]? I don\u2019t know, I have no sense of history. Once a play is written, it is out of my life and my desk is cleared.<\/p>\n

\"Sean
Sean Taylor and Jason Ralph in Exits and Entrances \u00a9 Courtesy of the Baxter Theatre<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Do you miss acting?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes! When I arrived in Cape Town, I said to Mannie [Manim, the Executive Director] take me to the theatre; I just want to see the auditorium and the stage. He showed me this remarkable auditorium. And I stood up there [he gestures to the stage<\/i>] and realised it was an auditorium that puts the audience in the palm of your hand. An actor can\u2019t wish for a better relationship.<\/p>\n

So you miss the South African audience?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, for one simple reason, it\u2019s the audience that occurs to me when I\u2019m writing a play. Harold Pinter said you write a play first for an audience of one, yourself at the desk. Then you think about it after that first encounter, if it has any quality, and I think of a South African audience that will know, capture, enjoy the nuances that one brings into one\u2019s writing. I write for my fellows, South Africans. You know, white and black, we are dealing with the same issues, they haven\u2019t gone away.<\/p>\n

Yes, but post-1994, everyone, not only artists, had to make shift.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I thought it was the end of me as a playwright. I thought there [I] was going to have nothing to write about; apartheid was gone. Nothing could be further from the truth. I write about desperate people, and there are as many desperate people in the new South Africa as there ever were in the old South Africa. So I am not going to die short of stories.<\/p>\n

Do you view your work in recent years, in particular Victory <\/i>and Coming Home<\/i>, as part political activism?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you\u2019re going to tell a real South African story you don\u2019t have to worry about its political resonances, they come with those built into them. Just get the story straight, tell the story truthfully and it will be like that pebble in the pond. There will be ripples and you don\u2019t have to worry about those ripples. No one goes into a pond without ripples. And you know, South African stories are like that. Why are people desperate? They are going to be very basic issues.<\/p>\n

\"Michael
Michael Maxwell and Dorothy Ann Gould in Hello and Goodbye \u00a9 Courtesy of the Baxter Theatre<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Have you felt a 21st<\/sup> century shift? When it became the year 2000 did you feel different or was it just an arbitrary date?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No, I just thought it brutally, tragically ironic, that the December month of that new millennium, Pumla Lolwana stood on the railway line, while the rest of us were pulling firecrackers, putting funny hats on our heads, blowing stupid little bugles, getting drunk, wasting money on presents, out of some sort of desperation that I find hard to comprehend, because it is such an awesome act, to stand with your children and make sure they can\u2019t run away, because one tried to and she pulled him back. Oh, my God.<\/p>\n

Have you ever thought of suicide?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Myself? No. That\u2019s why I had to write about it. Because I can\u2019t imagine a darkness that great. I am by nature and optimist, not a pessimist . . .<\/p>\n

Your plays are always redemptive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, redemptive, that\u2019s right. Sometimes the note of hope is a bit thin, fragile, but that note is there. In this one too, it is there, but it is more brutally in this one, than in anything else I have written. Suicide is something I can\u2019t understand \u2013 how life can get that dark that you give up. I have encountered suicide often enough, but it always leaves me with a question for which I have no answers.<\/p>\n

What of Helen Martins [on whom Fugard based The Road to Mecca<\/i>]?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, yes, but look, there too, although the truth about Helen Martins was suicide, I copped out. I gave it [The Road to Mecca<\/i>] a slightly more positive ending, that she realises there is a greater challenge than just lighting the candles and that was confronting darkness. So even that had a positive note in the end in her resolve to try and face the darkness. But of course Helen didn\u2019t; you\u2019re right, she drank caustic soda.<\/p>\n

Those two beautiful women [Helen and Else in Road to Mecca<\/i>]. For a man with my crude metabolism and crude whatchamacallit to go into that area. I was very audacious going into that. It was a learning curve, because it forced me to examine a lot of things about gender and role playing. I haven\u2019t done it again. Or have I done it again?<\/p>\n

\"Ameera
Ameera Patel and Cobus Rossouw in Victory \u00a9 Courtesy of the Baxter Theatre<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Perhaps Allison and Marta in Sorrows and Rejoicings<\/i>?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, that\u2019s right Sorrows and Rejoicings. And in Exits and Entrances<\/i>, Andr\u00e9 Huguenet, he was such a beautiful man.<\/p>\n

I saw the original production when it went to Edinburgh, and it was the best one I\u2019ve seen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It started off in one of my favourite little theatres just down the road from me, in southern California, and I was so happy with it. Those two actors [Morlan Higgins and William Hurley] had got to the heart of the play I had wanted to write, and they had captured the profound debt of gratitude that I had to that man [Huguenet], and even more important than that, forget myself, but that they had somehow touched on the beauty of that man. And his pain and his loneliness.<\/p>\n

Only the accents bothered me. As a South African playwright, performed all over the world, people keep attempting this very difficult accent of ours. Shouldn\u2019t it be played without accents?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s the first advice I give to every American director. Don\u2019t mess around with it. What South African accent are you going to talk about? We have a dozen. I say, oh please, don\u2019t call in your drama coaches and give these actors complications they don\u2019t need, just let them speak. But no, they don\u2019t always listen to me.<\/p>\n

\"Ana
Ana Nave and Jorge Silva in Uma li\u00e7\u00e3o dos alo\u00e9s, 1996 \u00a9 Courtesy of Teatro dos Alo\u00e9s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Are your choices artistic or do you have in mind the practical realities of the theatre today? I felt for instance that Booitjie and the Oubaas<\/i> would have been a fantastic three-act play of O\u2019Neill proportions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No, these are artistic choices. The canvas must be small, tight. I\u2019m a miniaturist. I haven\u2019t got an O Neill sweep. It\u2019s like, you know, the artist who chooses a piece of canvas this big [he pretends to hold up a canvas, a square foot in size<\/i>], whereas Brecht does the equivalent of Diego Riviera, he does a whole panorama, you know and it\u2019s magnificent. And Christ! my admiration for the ability! I couldn\u2019t tackle that. Give me two characters I\u2019m happy.<\/p>\n

When you write, do you perform the lines aloud?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, I find that I am talking to myself, It\u2019s about the sound . . . I first fell in love with that when listening to my mother with her Afrikaner background\u2015she was a Potgieter\u2015and what she did to the English language in trying to speak it correctly, it was beautiful, and that\u2019s when I fell in love for the first time\u2015like Hester . . .<\/p>\n

We had a fantastic revival last year of Hello and Goodbye<\/i> with Dorothy ann Gould.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I believe so! Oh, I am so proud of that woman. It\u2019s amazing that that little play refuses to lie down. It also gets revived in America.<\/p>\n

\"Jorge
Jorge Silva and Daniel Martinho in Uma li\u00e7\u00e3o dos alo\u00e9s, 1996 \u00a9 Courtesy of Teatro dos Alo\u00e9s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You must have a clear sense of the importance of your works in terms of their place in history, but do you ever think about how the work will speak to a future audience?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No, no. You can\u2019t indulge in that. But, Brent, I know for myself personally, I\u2019m not talking about the audience or the critics, but for me, Train Driver<\/i> is the most important play I have ever written. What other people are going to make of it, I don\u2019t know, but because it has that kind of significance for me, I realise I might never write another play. But I can\u2019t believe that, because my notebook is already full of ideas, images for work I want to do. So I must be very careful about talking about it as my last play, but it might be. My health is not quite what it used to be, and my wife and I live with the reality for both of us\u2015that something could happen suddenly. But one thing I do know, I will have my pen in my hand and I\u2019m not going to give it up easily to the undertaker when he tries to stretch me out for the coffin, I will hang on to it.<\/p>\n

\n

\"1027079145\"<\/p>\n

<\/a>[1] Brent Meersman<\/strong><\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2009 Athol Fugard
\nCritical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em> e-ISSN: 2409-7411<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This work is licensed under the
\nCreative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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