One of his responses was to introduce me to John Kani and Winston Ntshona. On the way I stopped for a week to see Athol in Skoenmakerskop near PE to discuss my ideas. I took leave to give myself space to think and drove from the furthest point North in SA to the furthest point South. Then followed ORESTES with Yvonne Bryceland, Wilson Dunster and Val Donald Bell. At Athol’s request we also toured the surrounding townships with both plays.I was starting to have dreams of a theatre that could present all the plays of our country with all the people of our country to all of our people. We were running PACT Drama at the time and invited Athol to bring his play and also PEOPLE ARE LIVING THERE to Johannesburg and Pretoria. Seeing that play and meeting that company was to change the way I saw and understood Theatre for the rest of my life and helped me understand that when a great story teller like Athol told our stories it could be the most powerful Theatre in the world.Ī few years later I went to see THE BLOODKNOT at the Little Theatre at the YMCA in Braamfontein with Athol and Zakes Mokae.Īlso during this time I went to see Athol and Molly Seftel in HELLO AND GOODBYE at the Library Theatre directed by Barney Simonįast forward to Grahamstown in the 60’s and Francois Swart and I sneaking into the back of the Rhodes Theatre to watch Athol and Yvonne Bryceland doing a dress rehearsal of BOESMAN AND LENA at what was to become an early manifestation of the Grahamstown Festival. Speaking SA English like I heard around the streets where I lived in Jeppe took to the stage and performed. So when I pulled up the curtain that Sunday you can imagine my surprise when a black company with one white man Athol Fugard
The shows that I worked on at the Brooke Theatre were all commercial comedies and musicals usually English in origin with la di da accents and I quickly learnt how to make cucumber sandwiches cutting the crusts off and arranging imitation whiskey and sodas and gin and tonics. I was always looking for ways to earn extra money and I used to volunteer to work shows on Sunday nights, Chamber music concerts, piano recitals, Dan Hill and Nico Carstens Shell Music Hall, and then one night there was to be a play it was a fundraiser organised by Benni Bonnacorsi for a playwright and his group of actors who rehearsed in Dorkay House and the show was to be NO GOOD FRIDAY. I got a job as an usher and stagehand at the Brooke Theatre in De Villiers Street, just down the road from the Johannesburg Railway station. I was still at school and needed to earn some money. It was in the 1950’s when I started in the theatre. The below speech was written and delivered by Fugard’s friend and long time colleague Mannie Manim, when he was awarded the Klein Karoo Nationale Kunstefees Life Time Achievement Award in 2019, for the 25th anniversary of the festival.įirst I would like to commend Kunste Onbeperk and Klein Karoo Nationale Kunstefees for honouring Athol Fugard with this award. The Fugard Theatre is proud to bear his name and honours him by providing a crucible of creativity and beacon of humanity for all South Africans regardless of race, colour, gender or creed. Many of his works have been turned into films with director Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi, based on his 1980 short story of the same name, won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film – South Africa’s first Academy award in this category.įugard lives in the Cape Winelands with his wife Paula and dog Jakkals.
He is also the author of four books and several screenplays. In 2011 he received the ultimate recognition from the world’s most prestigious theatre community – a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre.
His plays champion truth and a fundamental universal humanity. An internationally acclaimed playwright director and occasional actor, for over half a century he has written almost forty soul-searing plays with roles for all South Africans which have moved audiences in South Africa and around the world to laughter and tears as they reflected the inhumanity of apartheid. Athol Fugard was born in 1932 in Middelburg in the Karoo.