Athol Fugard facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Athol Fugard OIS
Portrait by Martha Swope, 1985
Born	Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard (1932-06-11)11 June 1932 Middleburg, Cape Province, South Africa
Died	8 March 2025(2025-03-08) (aged 92) Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa
Occupation	Playwright novelist actor director teacher
Education	University of Cape Town (dropped out)
Period	1956–2022
Genre	Drama novel memoir
Notable works	"Master Harold"...and the Boys Blood Knot
Spouse	Sheila Meiring ​ ​ (m. 1956; div. 2015)​ Paula Fourie ​ (m. 2016)​
Children	3, including Lisa

Athol Fugard was a famous South African playwright, novelist, actor, and director. He was born Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard on June 11, 1932, and passed away on March 8, 2025. Many people consider him South Africa's greatest playwright. Time magazine even called him "the greatest active playwright in the English-speaking world" in 1985.

Fugard wrote over thirty plays. He is best known for his powerful plays that spoke out against apartheid. Apartheid was a system in South Africa that separated people based on their race and treated non-white people unfairly. Some of his plays were even made into movies.

His novel Tsotsi was also turned into a film. This movie won an Academy Award in 2005, which is a very important film award. Several of his plays were nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play, a top award for theatre.

Athol Fugard also taught playwriting, acting, and directing at the University of California, San Diego. He received many awards and honors for his work. In 2005, the South African government gave him the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver for his amazing contributions to theatre. In 2011, he received a special Tony Award for his lifetime achievements in theatre. The Fugard Theatre in District Six, Cape Town, was named in his honor in 2010.

Early Life and Beginnings

Athol Fugard was born in Middelburg, South Africa, on June 11, 1932. His mother, Marrie, was an Afrikaner who ran a general store and then a lodging house. His father, Harold Fugard, was a former jazz pianist who became disabled.

In 1935, his family moved to Port Elizabeth. He started primary school there in 1938. He later attended Port Elizabeth Technical College for high school. After that, he studied philosophy and social anthropology at the University of Cape Town on a scholarship. However, he left the university in 1953 before finishing his degree.

After leaving university, Fugard traveled to North Africa. He worked on a steamship called the SS Graigaur, traveling to Japan. During this time, he started writing a novel, but he didn't like it and threw it into the sea. He later wrote about his two years as a merchant seaman in his 1999 play, The Captain's Tiger: a memoir for the stage.

In 1956, he married Sheila Meiring, who was studying drama. In 1958, they moved to Johannesburg. There, Fugard worked as a clerk in a court that dealt with cases involving Black South Africans. This job made him very aware of the unfairness of apartheid. He became friends with people who were fighting against apartheid. These experiences greatly influenced his early plays.

Theatre Career

Starting a Multiracial Theatre

In 1958, Athol Fugard helped create a theatre group that included actors of different races. This was very unusual during apartheid. He wrote, directed, and acted in plays for this group. Some of his early plays were No-Good Friday (1958) and Nongogo (1959). He performed in these plays with his colleague, Zakes Mokae, a Black South African actor.

After returning to Port Elizabeth in the early 1960s, Athol and Sheila Fugard started a new group called The Circle Players. They named it after a play by Bertolt Brecht called The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

In 1961, Fugard and Mokae starred in the first performance of Fugard's play The Blood Knot. This play was later revised and renamed Blood Knot in 1987. It was a very important early work for Fugard.

Standing Against Segregation

In 1962, Fugard faced a difficult decision. He had to decide if he could continue working in theatres that only allowed white audiences, or had separate sections for non-white people. He decided that he could not support segregation.

He believed that art could help people understand life and experiences, but it couldn't force people to change their minds. He felt that real change came from life itself, not just from plays. He chose to perform in places that allowed mixed audiences, even if those places were not fancy theatres. He felt that human dignity was the most important thing.

Fugard supported a call from the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain. This movement asked for an international boycott, meaning people should stop performing in segregated South African theatres. Because of this, Fugard faced more restrictions and was watched by the police. He started having his plays published and performed outside South Africa. His play The Blood Knot was performed in New York City in 1964, which helped start his career in America.

The Serpent Players

In the 1960s, Fugard formed another important group called the Serpent Players. The group's name came from their first practice space, which was a former snake pit at the Port Elizabeth Museum. This group was made up of Black actors who worked as teachers, clerks, and factory workers. They developed and performed plays even though the Security Police watched them closely.

The Serpent Players included talented actors like Winston Ntshona and John Kani. They worked with Athol Fugard to learn how to use the stage and perform. They performed plays by famous writers like Bertolt Brecht, August Strindberg, and William Shakespeare. They often performed in places like St Stephen's Hall in New Brighton, a Black township in Port Elizabeth.

The Serpent Players used ideas from Brecht's theatre, which encouraged audiences to think critically about what they saw. They also used humor from African variety shows. Their work led to famous plays like The Coat, Sizwe Banzi Is Dead (1972), and The Island (1973).

• The Coat was based on a real event involving the Serpent Players. It showed the difficult choices a woman faced when her husband was jailed for anti-apartheid activities.
• Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and The Island were created by Fugard working with John Kani and Winston Ntshona. These plays explored the frustrations of people living under apartheid. They encouraged audiences to think deeply about the characters' situations.

The play Blood Knot was filmed by the BBC in 1967. Fugard acted in it, playing Morris. After this, the South African government took away Fugard's passport.

Many of Fugard's early plays were performed at the Space Theatre in Cape Town, which opened in 1972. This theatre was important because it hosted the first performances of plays like The Island and Sizwe Bansi is Dead.

Plays in the 1980s

The Fugard Theatre in District Six, Cape Town

"Master Harold"...and the Boys, written in 1982, is one of Fugard's most famous plays. It tells a story inspired by his own life, about a 17-year-old white South African boy and two Black men who work for his family. The play first opened in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1982.

The Road to Mecca was another highly praised play by Fugard, first performed in 1984. It tells the story of an older woman in a small South African town who has spent years creating a unique artistic project.

Fugard also acted in his play A Place With the Pigs in 1987. In this play, he played a character who hid with pigs for many years, inspired by a true story of a soldier. Fugard suggested this play reflected his own struggles.

After Apartheid

After apartheid ended in South Africa, Fugard continued to write. His first play after this period was Valley Song, which premiered in 1995. In this play, Fugard played two characters: a white farmer and a mixed-race farmer. Both characters loved the land but were worried about changes.

In 2009, Fugard's play Coming Home premiered. It tells the story of Veronika, the granddaughter of a farmer from Valley Song, who returns to her home to start a new life for her son.

The Fugard Theatre opened in Cape Town in 2010. Athol Fugard's new play, The Train Driver, was performed there in March 2010. In 2014, he returned to the stage in his play The Shadow of a Hummingbird.

Film Work

Many of Athol Fugard's plays and his novel have been made into films. He acted in the first film adaptation of his play Boesman and Lena in 1973.

In 1992, he co-directed the film version of his play The Road to Mecca. His novel Tsotsi was adapted into a film in 2005. This movie, directed by Gavin Hood, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006.

Fugard also had small acting roles in other films. He played General Jan Smuts in the movie Gandhi (1982) and Doctor Sundesval in The Killing Fields (1984).

Later Life

In the 1990s, Fugard lived in San Diego, California, where he taught at the University of California, San Diego. He also taught at Indiana University for a year.

In 2012, Fugard returned to South Africa. He felt that Nelson Mandela should have served a second term as president to make his vision for the country stronger.

In 2015, after nearly 60 years of marriage, Athol and Sheila Fugard divorced. The next year, Fugard married Paula Fourie, a South African writer. They lived in the Cape Winelands region of South Africa and had two children, Halle and Lanigan.

Athol Fugard passed away at his home in Stellenbosch, South Africa, on March 8, 2025, at the age of 92. He had chosen a grave plot in Nieu-Bethesda, a village where he had a home. This village and the unique art of Helen Martins inspired his play The Road to Mecca. He wanted his gravestone to have a special message from a child he met: "Keep going, boss – you’re coming first!"

Fugard is survived by his children with Paula Fourie, and his daughter from his first marriage, the writer Lisa Fugard. Lisa Fugard moved to the United States in 1980 and later wrote a novel called Skinner's Drift, which is about a daughter returning to post-apartheid South Africa.

Plays

Here are some of Athol Fugard's plays, listed by when they were first performed or published:

Filmography

Films Based on Fugard's Work

• Boesman and Lena (1974)
• The Guest: An Episode in the Life of Eugene Marais (1977)
• Marigolds in August (1980)
• "Master Harold"...and the Boys (1984), TV movie
• The Road to Mecca (1991)
• Boesman and Lena (2000)
• Tsotsi (2005), won an Academy Award
• "Master Harold"...and the Boys (2010)

Fugard's Acting Roles in Films

• Boesman and Lena (1974) as Boesman
• The Guest: An Episode in the Life of Eugene Marais (1977) as Eugène Marais
• Meetings with Remarkable Men (1979) as Professor Skridlov
• Marigolds in August (1980) as Paulus Olifant
• Gandhi (1982) as General Jan Smuts
• The Killing Fields (1984) as Doctor Sundesval
• The Road to Mecca (1991) as Reverend Marius Byleveld

Awards and Honors

Athol Fugard received many awards for his theatre work and his contributions to the arts.

Theatre Awards

• Obie Award
  • 1971 – Best Foreign Play – Boesman and Lena (winner)
• Tony Award
  • 1975 – Best Play – Sizwe Banzi Is Dead / The Island (nomination)
  • 1981 - Best Play – A Lesson from Aloes (nomination)
  • 1982 - Best Play – "Master Harold"...and the Boys (nomination)
  • 1986 - Best Play – Blood Knot (nomination)
  • 2011 – Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre (winner)
• New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards
  • 1981 – Best Play – A Lesson From Aloes (winner)
  • 1982 – Best Play – "Master Harold"...and the Boys (runner-up)
  • 1988 – Best Foreign Play – The Road to Mecca (winner)
• Evening Standard Award
  • 1983 – Best Play – "Master Harold"...and the Boys (winner)
• Drama Desk Awards
  • 1982 – "Master Harold"...and the Boys (winner)
• Lucille Lortel Awards
  • 1992 – Outstanding Revival – Boesman and Lena (winner)
  • 1996 – Outstanding Body of Work (winner)
• The Audie Awards
  • 1999 – Theatrical Productions – The Road to Mecca (winner)
• Outer Critics Circle Award
  • 2007 – Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play – Exits and Entrances (nomination)

Special Honors

• Writers Guild of America, East Award
  • 1986 – Evelyn F. Burkey Memorial Award
• National Orders Award (South Africa)
  • 2005 – The Order of Ikhamanga in Silver – for his excellent work in theatre
• American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award
  • 2014 – Golden Plate Award
• Praemium Imperiale, 2014

Honorary Degrees

He received special degrees from many universities, including:

• Yale University, 1983
• Wittenberg University, 1992
• University of the Witwatersrand, 1993
• Brown University, 1995
• Princeton University, 1998
• University of Stellenbosch, 2006

See also

In Spanish: Athol Fugard para niños

• South Africa under apartheid