Athol Fugard

Athol Fugard (Athol Harold Lanigan Fugard) , 1932-, South African playwright, actor, and director. In 1965 he became director of the Serpent Players in Port Elizabeth; in 1972 he was a founder of Cape Town's Space Experimental Theatre. One of the first white playwrights to collaborate with black actors and workers, Fugard writes of the frustrations of life in contemporary South Africa and of overcoming the psychological barriers created by apartheid . Some of his works, such as Blood Knot (1960), the first in his family trilogy, were initially banned in South Africa. Widely acclaimed, his plays include Boesman and Lena (1969), Sizwe Bansi Is Dead (1972), A Lesson from Aloes (1978), the semiautobiographical work Master Harold … and the Boys (1982), The Road to Mecca (1985), and Playland (1993). In his first two postapartheid plays, Valley Song (1995) and The Captain's Tiger (1998), Fugard addresses rather personal concerns, but in Sorrows and Rejoicings (2001) he focuses on the complex racial dynamics of South Africa's new era. In Victory (2007), Fugard uses his experience as a burglary victim to dramatize a bleak contemporary South Africa, where theft and violence thrive. Fugard has also written one novel, Tsotsi (1980).

Bibliography: See also his Notebooks 1960-1977 (1983) and Cousins: A Memoir (1998).

Fugard, Athol (1932– ) South African playwright, director and actor. Fugard achieved international acclaim for his plays The Blood Knot (1961), Sizwe Bandi is Dead (1972), and My Children! My Africa (1990). His work often explores the effects of apartheid on South Africa's black population and the country's rapidly changing modern politics. He published an autobiography, Cousins: A Memoir, in 1997.

Fugard, Athol (b. 1932), playwright. He was born in Middleburg, South Africa, the son of an Afrikaner mother and a father of Irish‐Huguenot descent, and educated at the University of Capetown before writing plays in 1959. Fugard's first work to be produced in America was Non‐gogo (1978) at the Manhattan Theatre Club. His other plays to be seen in New York include The Blood Knot (1964), Boesman and Lena (1970), The Island/Sizwe Banzi Is Dead (1974), A Lesson from Aloes (1980), Master Harold . . . and the Boys (1982), The Road to Mecca (1988), and Valley Song (1995). Most of Fugard's plays concern apartheid and how it affects both the white and black citizens of his native country, and he is known for his poetic, philosophical tone rather than angry socialistic stance.