Athol Fugard Biography

Athol Fugard

Athol Fugard was born on the 11th of June 1932 in Middleburg Northern Cape, to a below average income household. His mother, Elizabeth Magdalena an Afrikaner, operated first a general store and then a boarding house; his father, Harold, was a disabled former jazz pianist of Irish, English and French Huguenot blood. In 1935, his family moved to Port Elizabeth. He attended Marist Brothers College in 1938, thereafter going to university of Cape Town to study philosophy. After his second year at the University of Cape Town he, with his mother’s consent dropped out to go and tour the world, he toured around Africa while working on a merchant ship where he began writhing. In 1956 Fugard married Sheila Meiring, a South African actress and writer.

He wrote his first play klaas and the devil.(1956) He there after wrote No-Good Friday (1958) ,the cell (1957) and nongogo (1959) which was his first ever play to be produced abroad in Sheffield, England and in New York, USA. In the years 1958-1961 Fugard worked with the Union Artists in Johannesburg. (The Union of South African Artists, known as Union Artists, was formed in the 1950s to protect black artists from being discriminated against). Around about 1959 Fugard moves to London to avoid conflict with the national government as his plays were going against the regime of the time where he writes the blood knot in 1960. This play was performed once in Johannesburg in 1961 before being banned by the government. In 1961 Fugards daughter Lisa Fugard is born, but unfortunately his father dies later that year, that same year Fugard joins the fight against apartheid and writes a play called the coat (1966) which is produced that in 1966 in South Africa. In 1967 Fugard returned to ...

... middle of paper ...

...esents the white people of the time and the power they had over the black people regardless of age or stature, Harold’s age being very symbolic in the play as he is young and he still has the power to order around two 40 year old black workers, very powerful but small aspect of the play. Harold in this play represents Athol as a boy and his experiences of apartheid. So Harold represents power as well as Athol’s childhood.

Athol fugard could be considered of the world’s most influential writers, with his plays being relevant to this day, not only for a remembrance of apartheid but for the emotional reflections humans have to have once in a while on the human race and what a flawed race we are. Fugard’s plays during apartheid recused black people and gave them hope and now after apartheid his plays serve as a capsule that stores South Africa’s most painful memories.