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I know that the author is from South Africa and based on the images that I've seen from the author, I assume that he's male. I know that Apartheid was a set of laws that was passed that systemized and allowed for any kind of racism against non-white humans.

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I want to know about the ideological backgrounds of his family and if he's been actively involved in politics or any kind of social organization. I'd also like to understand his context (childhood wise) to understand what family he comes from, values that may have been passed on to him, challenges and any possible biases that may be present in his person, and possibly could be seen in the work.

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I know that the author is a man from South Africa.

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I know that the author is from South Africa and i know that South Africa has a history of racial discrimination.

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I know that apartheid was a system of segragation and racism in place in South Africa until the deposition of white South Africans in power and the rise of Nelson Mandela and the ANC. I know nothing about Athol Fugard.

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Well, I know that Athol Fugard is a South African playwright, as Miss Michelle said. Also I know that Aparthiel means segregation or discrimination. To be honest, this is my first time reading or listening to both concepts and I learnt all this during the meet.

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Apartheid: not much, just know that it was very racist and limited the  rights and liberties of black people  in South Africa.
Athol Fugard: Also not much. just that he wrote this play.

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I know he is a male South African author and playwriter which is very famous n his country. I dont have any knowledge of what apartheid is.

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I know that apartheid was a discriminatory policy and system against black people that was implemented in South Africa, which left an important aftermath to the current life of south africans. I also know that Nelson Mandela fought it hardly and ended up in jail a few times for it, which shows that the system was really strong and supported by a lot of people.

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I know that Athol Fugard was a South African writer...

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To be completely honest I know nothing about Athol Fugard. About apartheid, I know it was a big issue in the 20th century in South Africa. It has been a very explored and well known problem which still is very relevant.

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I really do not know much about Apartheid apart from the fact that it is related to allowing racism. In regards to Athol Fugard, I only know he is male and South African.

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-What I know about Apartheid is that it was a political system that normalized the racial segregation, that praised white supremacy by being the top of the social status in South Africa. Connecting it to the play, I could infer that it is related to segregation and white supremacy.

-About the author, I just know that he is from South Africa and that he is white, so maybe, the play is related to his personal experience with Aparthied

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Regarding the author, Athol Fugard, I only know that the he is from South Africa. About the Apartheid I know it consisted of "laws" (I'm not completely sure) that "permitted" discrimination/racial segregation in South Africa.

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I guess I want to know how and where exactly the word Aparthiel. Also I would like to know what inspired Athol Fugard to create the play, maybe learn a bit of his own personal background and the context of production of the play. Maybe how this play was received by the south African community.

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I know that the author is a white man from South Africa.

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Regarding Athol Fugard, I do not have any information on him. I know he is a playwriter and he is from South Africa. Regarding the apartheid, I know it was a period of racial segregation in South Africa, incentivizing the supremacy of white coloured population and the discrimination and separation of those of color.

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I don't know much about the author, apart that he is a male writer from South Africa. I do know that Apartheid means segregation, so I think the play might be related to that.

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I would like to know about Athol Fugard's general biography and what could have influenced his writing, etc. I know about apartheid in general but knowing about some details that would help me further understand the text would also be nice.

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I would like to learn about his ideological thoughts and events in his life that inspired his perspective.

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I would like to know what's his standing regarding racial and political issues in South Africa. I would also like to know the ways the apartheid affected regular people and I desperately must know if this is a white savior story.

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I would like to know about the author's personal context, his most important life events and childhood. Also, I would like to learn about the play's context too, like what was happening when it was written.

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I know that  the author comes from South Africa. I don't know about Apartheid.

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I would like to know what is the playwriters posture about racism and the situation that south africa has lived throught its history. Also I would like to know what apartheid is.

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I know that the author was a white person from south africa. Other than that, I know next to nothing

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I am interested in knowing Athol Fugard's inspiration behind his play and furthermore, his upbringing. Regarding Apartheid I would like to know how it came to a finish and an end, as well as how it developed through time in South Africa.

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I absolutely know nothing of Apartheid & Athol Fugard. I had never heard these names before.

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I would like to have a better understanding of apartheid, as well as getting to know who Athol Fugard was.

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Stories of black people who lived through Apartheid.

Regarding Athol Fugard, I'd like to know what motivated him in writing the play

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I would like to know more about Athol Fugard's early life and career. Also, I think it would be interesting (not in a morbid way I swear) to learn about how Apartheid affected all the non-white people. Was there a big change in society after Apartheid? How severe? So many questions and some may be slightly stupid.

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A lot of things from Athol Fugard, as I only know that he's a south african writer.
- His early life & experience with apartheid
- His opinion/vision towards apartheid
- Where (place in south africa) and when (what moment of apartheid) did he live
- What else has he written & if some of his other works are related to apartheid as well.
- Possible movements he could have supported/participated supporting/criticizing apartheid or some other systems/policies.

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I want to know more about how Apartheid affected people, as well as how it influenced the writing of Fugard's play. I would also like to know more about the author's personal life and context.

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I would like to learn about the author's background, and see how it influenced his writing.
I would like to learn about what happened in Apartheid on the general terms as I know nothing about it

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I would like to get to know anything I can about Athol Fugard.

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I want to learn more about South Africa and the context of its people's struggles. I feel that, although being an international student, I find myself learning very little about the african continent in general.

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I know that the Apartheid was a period in South African history where racism was rampant, and that the author is from South Africa.

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What I expect to learn from my future investigation about the play is the context of it (from that decade and the actual situation), and also get to know more about South African culture and vision about the political and racial situation back then and today.

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-  How did supporters of apartheid adapt when this system was not used anymore.
- Which were the stated that were affected the most.
- What were the biggest changes when apartheid was abolished.
-What were the main protests against apartheid
-What were the main rules/ policies that apartheid had?

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For the moment, I want to know about the parts of the Apartheid and Athol Fugard that will be essential to my grade and understanding of his work.

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I would like to know what it is, since I am very lost. At least that is what I wanna now for now, and then look into other stuff

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I would like to know what inspired the author to write about the Apartheid, whether he was personally involved in it or was "inspired" by it. Along with that I would like to research the author's biography to understand his writing.

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I barely anything about the Apartheid or Athol Fugard as I have never heard about it until now, but I do know that it had a fairly big impact on the South African society.

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I barely anything about the Apartheid or Athol Fugard as I have never heard about it until now, but I do know that it had a fairly big impact on the South African society.

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I would like to learn about the Apartheid as a whole and Fugard's biography as I believe it is the first thing I need to learn about a person in order to understand their impact.

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I would like to learn about the Apartheid as a whole and Fugard's biography as I believe it is the first thing I need to learn about a person in order to understand their impact.

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Wednesday:
1. INQUIRE according to your group topic.
2. Write posts (remember to log in with SC email) in the third column to share your findings, support each post with a link to info.
3. Respond to at least one other post outside of your group

*Don't repeat posts, context topics are expansive, so do thorough research.

Note: The context research groups are  designated topics, you can converse as a group to define aspects of personal interest you wish to pursue within the context topic.
If you need a mini Meet let me know and I can open some (I'm online in class Meet)

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- He is known as an anti-apartheid writer and dramatist, however, in his plays he criticises in a pacific way, so sometimes he may seem like he stays in the middle ground, not choosing a posture anti-apartheid or pro-apartheid.
- Nonetheless, from his position of white privilege, he did write from the perspectives of black people suffering the consequences of apartheid, several novels, and worked with them when they were segregated the most.
- Fugard is also known for giving a voice to the marginalised, who ever they are, not only black people. So in this way, he has other purposes than fighting for a cause or rebelling against apartheid.
- Possible biases: 1. He's a white male, so even if he worked with black people and their perspectives, it is very difficult that his novels could be completely representative of the marginalized lives. 2. His work is literary, so in order to connect with the reader some stylistic features need to be used, which can attract them, but also it can make the author separate a little from reality and how things actually happened.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312250491_A_Critical_Analysis_of_Athol_Fugard's_Social_Vision_in_Four_Selected_Plays

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Abstract

Athol Fugard enjoys a place of honour in the South African and generally African canon as a great dramatist, creative collaborator, director and as an artist who was able to create a distinctive theatre that blended African and Western forms of performance. His multidimensional (rather than a given perspective) approach to art enabled him to retain his literary leaning and identity. This article examines his often downplayed but equally potent contribution to the struggle against apartheid through theatre. It also discusses his multilayered identity and how it affected his compositions and play-making, as well as the paradoxes associated with even his most political plays. For instance, while he promoted a belief in 'the personal being inextricably political', in his plays, in public utterances he denied being political. The article further examines some of the plays' contested politics through a discussion of the diverse facets of restriction employed by the apartheid regime to gauge and suppress politics in the arts at the time and the underground activities of the playwright and his actor-collaborators who had to contend with the apartheid machinery that was designed - overtly or covertly - to suffocate any form of art deemed subversive and/or anti-apartheid. Generally, the article is anchored in the relation between intention, context and text or performance.

Introduction

Old and current studies on Athol Fugard's politics and commitment in theatre reveal that his art is enmeshed in controversies. His plays, even the radical ones such as Sizwe Bansi Is Dead (1972), Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act (1972) and The Island (1973), are replete with paradoxes and have generated considerable debates. Although he was more of a pacifist, he took giant and courageous strides to speak for the underdog and therefore inadvertently against the regime and the institutionalised white privileged position. It would seem, as a white artist, he battled with the choice of content - between either speaking against apartheid or standing up for the oppressed. He chose the middle-ground, which explains why his political leaning is hard to unearth. For instance, despite the calls by black artists from the 1970s for art to serve a singular revolutionary role, he retained his conciliatory ideological and literary leanings. He steadfastly maintained the middle-ground, a space where conflicting identities and ideas clash and cohere. Predictably, activists such as Biko ( 1971:55) criticised this fence-sitting as a form of compromise or adaptation.

Using strictly political parameters, Fugard's liberalism is also criticised by critics such as Hodgins ( 1976), Coetzee ( 1992), Kavanagh ( 1985) and Mphahlele ( 1967). More recent studies on his plays show that the plays are potent enough as alternative anti-establishment plays (Burns 2002; Cima 2007; Davis 2013; Diala 2006; Olaiya 2008). This article does not only support these more recent studies but also reveal that Fugard actually crossed the strict racial line by writing about black experiences and working in close collaboration with black artists at a time when dissenting voices were silenced by the apartheid state, thus retaining a position as a non-commissioned black person's voice.

The dilemma of Fugard's identity, his literary leaning and survival strategies is evident in his plays - even the collaborative ones that are still regarded as his most political venture - in the way he avoids direct political (anti-regime) statements and refuses to identify with any of the contending groups, whether white or black. Fugard's non-partisan stance, or what some critics refer to as his detachment from the real events in his plays, enabled him to remain relevant to the struggle, at least in the arts where he does not have to throw stones or promote violence or sacrifice as part of the struggle. His characters are multifaceted and so represent his multilayered views of identity (as in the Port Elizabeth and post-Statements plays), as well as the ever-shifting nature of socio-historical situations. This article deals with these complex issues and with Fugard's adoption of a multidimensional approach to art - a method that ensured his survival, as well as his transcendence of a single identity and restrictive state legislation.

Identity, politics and representation in the arts

Fugard is reputably the 'most widely published and produced playwright from South Africa' (Kruger 2005:19); his status extends beyond the shores of his region and continent. His plays - both the solo and collaborative - have earned him an enduring place in the South African canon. As Kruger ( 2005:19) points out, his 'mature plays created a South African idiom that could be national, local, and intimate all at once'. As the most prolific playwright in Southern Africa, he has been a major influence of:

... theatre for the last half century, an achievement that received fitting tribute when a theatre was established in his name in a renovated church hall in the former District 6 in Cape Town in 2010. (Walder 2015:125)

Fugard's plays embody the possibilities of many realisations and have generated debates both locally and internationally. Notwithstanding his declaration that he was not a writer with a political cause, his commitment status has been contested over the decades. Fugard (in Walder 2003:2) declares that the political tag is frustrating because it generates expected political positions whenever his plays are read or received, thereby denying him 'certain freedoms' as a writer. Fugard was more interested in a theatre that could speak across the spectrum and thus created plays (sometimes in close collaboration with others) that survived the times and transcended local, national and regional concerns. Alluding to this, Walder ( 2015) argues:

Since the 1960s his plays have commanded audiences worldwide, although for many years they were premiered in his own country, in marginal, non-mainstream venues, with himself as director and, often, lead actor. His plays reveal a society in which the form of racist ideology known as apartheid created suffering of an intensity that shocked and which is yet depicted as potentially survivable. His is a dark vision of pain that never excludes the possibility of hope and dignity. (p. 125)

Fugard had always 'protested against the prevailing tide of opinion' (Walder 2015:127) and as such refused to tailor his art to serve the sole purpose of the revolution. Even his renowned early works are not limited to protest per se. These plays offer a voice to the marginalised and voiceless in society, whether the black people, mixed-race people or white people. It is through these downtrodden people that he represents the human and universal conditions. His works 'revolved around a few fundamental themes: identity, pain, guilt, and survival' (Walder 2015:126). His painting on a small canvas is a microcosm of human experiences. And although he connects 'social awareness' and 'individual responsibility' (Walder 2003:12), he pays more attention to the potentials and survival of the individual, rather than to the revolutionary action. As a result, he was viewed by some critics as an apolitical writer, something that Fugard challenged because he did not believe in categorising writers as political or apolitical.

As a member of the underprivileged white class in his society, Fugard criticised the existing human condition and placed hope in the individual's will to survive. This constitutes an act of protest against the apartheid state whose policies sought to crush any semblance of self-belief in individuals. He crossed the strict racial line, but unlike white activists such as Ruth First or Joe Slovo, he was careful enough not to incur the full wrath of the state. Fugard hardly stood with the masses, especially when his ideological view was at stake; he neither accepted white supremacy and racism nor supported the corruption that came with the 'new, multiracial and democratic regime in his country', as demonstrated in his post-apartheid dramas, Valley Song (1996), Sorrows and Rejoicings (2002) and Coming Home (2009) (Walder 2015:121). In fact, he did not align with any race or class, and this gave him a rather neutral playing ground that enabled him to transcend petty politics, allegiance and identity.

Fugard's middle-ground position cannot be completely cut off from the complex nature of his identity and experiences. He had a mixed identity: his father, Harold - a disabled former jazz pianist - was of Irish, English and French Huguenot descent and his mother, Marie Potgieter - who operated a general store and later a lodging house - was an Afrikaner. Fugard's 'mixed descent' largely explains his multilayered identity and thus to some extent even the paradoxes in his plays. Notably, he inherited 'both the narrowly Calvinist but independent attitudes of his mother's background, and the more liberal attitudes of the English-speaking community, if not of his father' (Walder 2003:10). Fugard's mother had a stronger sense of identity than his father (Walder 2003:10; Vandenbroucke 1985:67), and this to some extent explains why she had more influence on young Fugard. His mother's strength lies behind a series of the 'powerful female figures in his work' (Walder 2015:125). Fugard, however, had an English education and chose the English language instead of Afrikaans as a medium of expression in his plays. That was informed by the need to communicate to a 'world audience' (Walder 2003:10), but, importantly, without necessarily sacrificing the local feel of the material he was dealing with.

According to Walder ( 2003:12), Fugard had always been obsessed with the other, especially those 'compatriots excluded from the centre of power and mired in poverty and oppression'. This fixation had its roots in his teenage years, which he spent with the few black people who worked at his mother's store and poignantly he re-enacted the personal experiences in Master Harold and the Boys (1982). And in 1953, shortly after he dropped out of the University of Cape Town where he was studying Philosophy and Social Anthropology (the degree seemed unimportant to him at that time, although the philosophy was vital as an underpinning to his expressed ideologies), he left home and hitchhiked north to the Sudan. He eventually spent a year working on a steamship called S.S. Graigaur in East Asia, adventures that constitute his autobiographical play, The Captain's Tiger (1997). These were experiences, as he narrates, that 'cured him of racism endemic among South Africans' (Walder 2015:126). His close contact with other races, first the black people at the store and then the people on deck during his travels, deeply shaped his outlook and sense of identity.

Fugard's acute awareness of the potentialities of others and the need to sympathise with their experiences, led him to establish a multiracial theatre in 1958 - the Circle Players - for which he wrote, directed and acted. This resulted in the production of the township learning-plays No-Good Friday (1958) and Nongogo (1959). These plays are set in the townships, with the black actors in the group serving as his conduits into the layers of black experiences. In The Coat (1966), Sizwe Bansi Is Dead (1972) and The Island (1973), he openly collaborated with black actors, which constituted a personal and political risk at that time. Crow and Banfield ( 1996:100) correctly single him out as a pioneer of the tradition of white-black collaboration in South Africa. To his credit, his collaborative dramas ( Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island) with Kani and Ntshona were successfully performed and were, arguably, better than anything he had done on his own. Generally, his later experimental plays with the Serpent Players - at least from 1966 with the staging of The Coat- had a more direct relationship with audiences (especially black people because of their political and forceful content) than what had been possible with the reworked adapted plays they were staging. The collaborations allowed for the projections of diverse identities and ideas, but had their setbacks because they were marred by suspicion, controversies and conflict of interest (Davis 2013; Peterson 1990; Richard 1990).

Richard ( 1990:234) suspects that Fugard 'had ulterior motives for collaboration', perhaps both for his reputational gains and to suppress the radical contents of black people plays. Kani and Ntshona, though, transcended any suspicion (and segregationist legislation) on interracial activities by actively and willingly working closely with Fugard. At some point in their career they were even categorised and documented as his domestic servants in order to manipulate the apartheid legislation that limited relationships between black people and white people. The need to transcend legislative constraints informed their use of two-hander technique, one achieved through 'role deconstruction and de-totalisation' (Olaiya 2008:81). This ultimately led to the development of the 'cockroach theatre', a theatre that 'cannot afford large casts and elaborate sets and stage properties' (Olaiya 2008:81).

The cockroach theatre depended almost entirely on the actors' creativity and experimentation and improvisation. Kani and Ntshona played significant roles in the creation of Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island in this regard. Cima ( 2009), Davis ( 2013) and Dahl ( 2014) particularly note the complications associated with the authorship of Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island and the identity of the co-authors in relation to the plays' political content. Davis ( 2013:121), especially, highlights the tension between the co-authors and the unfortunate transformation of the plays by Oxford University Press in 1974 from political plays to liberal works without Kani and Ntshona's due input when they were reduced to written texts, Statements.

Sizwe Bansi Is Dead on the one hand was developed through a 'challenge and response' style with Fugard serving as the creative agent-provocateur (Dickey 1987:175). Fugard, Kani and Ntshona (as co-creators and competing voices) surrendered their identities and experiences in the play-making process. Their adoption of the challenge and response technique - similar to Socratic dialectics - enabled them to experiment with the contentious image (the photograph) that forms the heart of the play (Taylor 1974). It is from the image that the trio 'developed a play with an unusual mixture of Brecht, Fugard and realism; and which unlike most of Fugard's works has a rather positive outcome' (Richard 1990:241). The photograph served as a launch pad for the dialectical exchanges between the competing voices. Sizwe Bansi Is Dead is the re-enactment of the co-creators' real-life experiences (heavily filtered through memories) presented through a three-way give-and-take process, with all the voices having a say. Foley ( 1996) traces the process leading to the examination of the pass law system:

Ntshona, Kani, and Fugard [...] bring their personal experiences of this legislative maze to bear upon the play: Ntshona had firsthand experience of problem with the pass law; Kani had worked as a welfare assistant with the Bantu Administration in New Brighton [...]; and Fugard could draw on his bitter memories of working as a clerk in the Native Commissioner's Court in Fordsburg during the 1950s. (p. 205)

Fugard created real-life characters and gave his actors so much importance in play-making that even his scripted plays had to pass through a hammering process. He gave the actors a chance to improvise with dialogue and action, and not just interpret a finished script. Improvisation was key to his practice, a form of play-making popular in 'the west in the 1960s and 1970s, when its defining principles of spontaneity, creative play, openness ... and group participation captured the imagination of artists ...' (Allain & Harvey 2006:87). Improvisation became an alternative 'tool of creative stimulation [...] and for devising performances', and is a suitable collaborative technique because it is fluid and gives equal chances to competing voices (Allain & Harvey 2006:87). Steadman ( 1992:191) believes that a collaborative work that explores improvisation may not really be more objective than a single-voice play but it at least 'reflects a dialectical exchange between different competing voices' in play-making. It is known for the shared creative and political attitudes of its participants, which, in the end, inform its form and content.

The political statements in Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island were not actually what Fugard would have wanted to say, or what he might have said if he were to work alone, given his take on art and politics. Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, for example, is clearly political and a work ensconced in protest because the actor-creators brought their life experiences into it. The play is more of an embellished recreation of the actors' lives. This explains why Fugard, who did not want to be reduced to a political artist, distanced himself from the performances of the play, alongside The Island, after its eventual success as a potent political work internationally and at home. Nonetheless, the collaborators did not sacrifice poetics and aesthetics (features that define the literary) in pursuit of a political ends in the makings of the plays. They understood quite well that political processes were a part of their lives and had to be reflected in their works, and so the politics in their works was not an entirely 'independent element solely intended from the start' (Vandenbroucke 1975:191). Fugard himself (in Walder 2003:10) admits that there had not been a single aspect of his life that had not been touched by political events.

In devising Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island, Fugard, Kani and Ntshona chose to let art speak for them. It is worth mentioning that Fugard's influence - first as a reputable artist and then as a collaborator - helped in promoting the poetics in the plays, rather than the politics. This, in a way, informs some of the differences in the reception of the plays as performances and as written texts that emphasise humanism and universality. Despite this shift in impact and value, however, the plays are still more political and hit harder on the views and policies of the apartheid regime than, say, Fugard's Port Elizabeth and post-Statements plays. The Port Elizabeth plays, for example, only 'exploit the bleakness, poverty and degradation of life in and around Port Elizabeth, all three hint at the possibility of survival, even joy,' testifying the playwright's sympathy for the black population without 'directly indicting the agents causing the suffering' (Burns 2002:237). Fugard knew his limits as an artist in a police state and, like Camus, lumped socio-political structures 'with the universal and ineluctable absurdities of the human condition' (Diala 2006:243). His extensive reading of Camus' works and philosophy from 1962 to 1963 influenced his views on the nature of 'man's rebellion, the significance of human action, and the importance and function of art' (Dickey 1987:9).

This explains why he accords attention to survival, joy and inward-good - typical ideals in the works of Camus, especially in The Myth of Sisyphus. Instead of resorting to violence, both artists reinforce (differently) the view that evasions and acceptance of death as a gift are solutions to the human problem - a comfort Fugard was criticised about. This comfort is pronounced in Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island in Sizwe and Winston's (like Sophocles' Oedipus) acceptance of their sad fate. This absurdist and existentialist form of drama emerged in the early 1950s with the success of Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus (1951), Samuel Beckett's (1906-1989) Waiting for Godot (1953) and in dramas by Eugene Ionesco (1931-1994) and Arthur Adamov (1908-1970). Fugard's plays (even in his early stage as a playwright) are littered with these influences, but with time he managed to create an art peculiar to his own context and leanings. In his own way, he created and devised (with his black actors) watered-down political plays that did not offer answers to apartheid brutality, such that even the bitter anti-state statements in them are best realised through a second-layer reading.

Unlike Camus, whose bitter experiences led him to alienate himself (a form of exile similar to that of his character, Meursault, in The Stranger) towards the end of his life, Fugard maintained his middle-ground. Camus' Meursault, in The Stranger, is parallel to Fugard's Sizwe Bansi Is Dead (1993) who is considered a traitor. Fugard's expressed support (in Rae 1971:78) for black people and the poor (of all races) met with challenges and rejection by some black artists. He defied this historically troubled and extreme context (the setting of all his plays apart from Dimetos) and overcame suspicions and suppression by utilising the stage to depict painful South African experiences, the type found in Boesman and Lena.

His Port Elizabeth and post-Statements plays were concerned with personal experiences - especially of white people and were mainly meant for white people audiences. Mainly, the plays were more concerned with the dramatist's personal experiences than general statements about the conditions of life in his country. He demonstrated a deep-seated concern with the specifics of life as against the universal concerns. He declares his position in MacLennan ( 1981):

If there have ever been universals in my writing they have had to look after themselves. I concern myself with the specifics. When the fire-blackened paraffin tin, or Boesman's flea ridden mattress, or the mud between Lena's toes means something to me, things might start to happen. It's been this way with anything I have ever written. I think it was Camus that spoke about 'the truth the hand can touch'. (p. 219)

These specific feature in The Island is the re-enactment of oppression and the unmitigated concomitant nature of the prison conditions. The materials that constitute the story suggest that it is a detailed but creative account of the suffering and psychology of black prisoners. Fugard, as a white person, never lived in black townships, and was never incarcerated on the island; he relied on his black actors, and on his notebooks, which are a detailed record of many years of research on Robben Island. Kani supplied details from the letters he received from his brother, Harry, who served a 5-year term there (Laurea 1998:87). Ntshinga and Duru's testimonies (scribbled in Fugard's notebooks years earlier) were also utilised during the play-making exercises. The actor-creators experimented, improvised and arrived at an acceptable account. The Island 'operates within a dialectics of performance and text, player and role [...] peculiar to dramatic performance, and especially to the dramatic representation of rehearsals and workshops' (Dahl 2014:3).

The nature of the workshops, with the usual experiments and improvisations, made it possible for Fugard to escape from developing a writer's block and move from a pronounced 'witness' (precisely after the staging of his solo play, Boesman and Lena, in 1969), to being more of an active participant. He was worried that the play did not address his socio-political concerns. Walder ( 2015:132) maintains that Fugard wanted to 'align himself with the forces of change and resistance in the country', and so his 'drive to bear witness to the lives of the victims of apartheid soon created a remarkable group of experiments', with a play-making method that placed his 'actors' experiences at the centre of the stage, challenging through production and performance the very divisions upon which the state relied'. This technique also enabled the co-authors to transcend the socio-political constraints that used to cripple the arts at the time. Apartheid compelled the artists in the country to re-strategise their theatre-making process in order to create works that would survive the dangerous times - a period when 'an innocent politics and an innocent theatre were no longer possible' (Purkey 1998:17). In the case of the devised plays Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island, the co-authors' choice of form and content ensured their survival and (along with Workshop '71's Survival) influenced the post-Soweto black theatre.

Fugard, Kani and Ntshona managed to break the long conspiracy of silence in the country in Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island. This; however, started with The Coat, an exercise which prepared the ground for the Serpent Players' most radical experiments in the 1970s. The play demonstrated that protest statements can be made using the theatre and that the artist can get away with it, a meta-experiment with immediate materials and politics. The actors (with Fugard as scribe and agent-provocateur) used Brechtian techniques to depict the situation in the country (Burns 2002:237). The scenes in this play 'are a dialectic in Brechtian style, with a presenter who challenges the characters and/or actors' feelings and motives and actors coming out of character [...]' (Burns 2002:238). The Coat reveals the actors' ability to manage the misfortunes in the country and channel bitter experiences in the right direction, transforming the apartheid stage into a political one (Cima 2007).

In the making of The Coat, the actors used the Brechtian distancing technique to analyse the fate of the 'coat' and how best it could be put to use by the man's wife. The fate of the man's family and the coat are creatively re-enacted on stage, the motive being to explore the political events in the country. The play does not, however, depict events as given, but as texts in themselves that are open to play. Fugard's depiction of the specifics of individual suffering did not start - or end - with The Coat. He had exhibited similar concern in his learning-plays, Nongogo and No-Good Friday, in the characters' quest for survival despite fear, poverty and humiliation. In most of his plays, the individual is rooted at the centre, so much that the yearning for survival and possible joy hardly elude his characters, even in their most troubled moments.

The experiments that followed also proved that the issues bedevilling individual life could be intellectualised and talked about. Kani (in Richard 1990:248) states that these 'experiments were commanded by truth'. This places The Island experiment a step further than the normal intellectualisation practice because it was more realistic and enabled the co-creators to speak about the notorious prison. The Island and Sizwe Bansi Is Dead managed to set a little fire to the apartheid stage, but they also had their limitations. The co-creators reveal an unexpressed consensus between prisoners and jailers in The Island and a silent approval of harsh laws and bureaucracy in Sizwe Bansi Is Dead. The plays may have their failings, but they at least kept the hope alive and promoted the belief in the personal being inescapably political.

Fugard experimented with alternatives but never preferred sacrifice and violence as a solution to human problems. His position on violence was largely informed by Camus, who advocated for metaphysical rebellion instead of revolutionary violence (Diala 2006). He believed in the ability of the individual to survive against all odds. His characters represented hope, as well as the belief in individual freedom. They were aware of their place in society and the little they could achieve and so shoulder their troubles by trying to chart their own paths, as in Boesman in Boesman and Lena and Sizwe in Sizwe Bansi Is Dead. They also proffer possible ways out, like Winston in The Island, who declares that he has played his role in the struggle, calling on others to also stick their necks out for the same cause.

Furthermore, Buntu's 'surgery' of Sizwe and Robert's passbooks in Sizwe Bansi Is Dead is also an apt demonstration that the apartheid system can be manipulated at its best, with the attendant risk in mind. Another instance is Styles, who promotes the individualistic values of struggle and self-reliance in a bid to emerge from nothingness to being one's own boss and proprietor. In the end, and as Fugard believes and practises, art is not expected to preach, but should generate discussion and/or interpretation, something Sizwe Bansi Is Dead managed to achieve in one of its early runs. Fugard (in Schoningh 1985) recounts that it generated arguments and protest among audience members:

Arguments and counter-arguments, angry declarations and protests followed fast and furiously. As I stood at the back of the hall listening to it I realised I was watching a very special example of one of theatre's major responsibilities in an oppressive society: to try to break the conspiracy of silence that always attends an unjust social system. And most significant of all: that conspiracy was no longer being assaulted just by the actors. The action of our play was now being matched and equally by the action of the audience. People were saying directly and forcefully, almost recklessly so, what they felt and thought [...] A performance on stage had provoked a political event in the auditorium [...]. (p. 235)

This may well not have been Fugard's intention from the beginning. He was satisfied with the play's early success, but needed something more. As suggested earlier, he refused to respond to the call to use theatre solely for political purposes because he did not want to be tagged as a political artist, as that would have limited his art and achievements. The publication of the statements in 1974 (including Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, The Island and Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act) by Oxford University Press came as a saving grace. As Oxford University Press editor of the edition, Carol Buckroyd, did serious editorial work that finally watered down the plays' political impact and repackaged Fugard as more of a universal playwright to the detriment of his co-authors (Davis 2013). Fugard, at Buckroyd's request, also included a solo introduction to the trilogy, thus becoming both the main author and spokesman in a taut debate about both political conditions and artistic exploration:

Thus, the reader of these most overtly political of Fugard's plays was reassured at the threshold of the book that there's no mention of the theory of apartheid in the plays ... The reader was instead assured that the politics of the plays were tempered by literary abstraction. The specific South African content was not denied, but the plays were promoted as more widely significant, as representations of 'Africa' and the 'African experience ...' (Davis 2013:126)

As pointed out, Fugard garnered most of the materials for Sizwe Bansi Is Dead from his black actor-collaborators, even as he did much of the writing when one looks at the printed version, which is part of the statements. It is Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island that ensured a place for Fugard in the canon and not his prior - although successful - plays such as The Blood Knot. Cima ( 2009:103) notes, however, that Kani's and Ntshona's contributions as co-creators and actors to the success of the plays were 'marginalised in favour of championing the figure of Fugard as author'. Their names were omitted internationally, while Fugard was celebrated as a great dramatist of universal (not regional or national this time around) importance. Clive Barnes (in Cima 2009:106) argues that the plays are great because of the 'contributions of all three men to the script'. The relationship between the co-creators turned sour and manifested during the 1977 Royal Court revival of Sizwe Bansi Is Dead. Fugard became dissatisfied with the collaborations and the reductive label that greeted the success of Sizwe Bansi Is Dead. He felt that the politics in the play had surpassed its poetry, a rather naïve and unfortunate stance that prompted his critics and black playwrights to question his commitment.

Cima ( 2009:108) points out that Sizwe Bansi Is Dead 'transformed into exactly what Fugard meant to avoid ever since he stepped into the rehearsal room with Kani and Ntshona in 1972: an agitprop protest drama'. Thus, while Kani and Ntshona toured the play around the world - from England, Scotland, Ireland, New York, and Washington to Australia - before going back to London in 1977, Fugard was dissatisfied with its agitprop nature. Fugard often questioned the political dimension of the play (alongside The Island) since it did not reflect his personal and metaphysical and apolitical vision. He struggled with this dilemma in a country which placed artists in a position whereby 'their work will always be measured against the current political situation' (Dickey 1987:2). He believed that art should 'reflect the truthfulness of suffering without resorting to propaganda or moral instruction' (Dickey 1987:3). For him, didacticism, politics and propaganda (if they must appear in the arts at all) should play a second-layer role: a latent rather than manifest position. This explains, as highlighted earlier, his disassociation with Sizwe Bansi Is Dead as performance, especially its tour abroad and in South Africa, with Kani and Ntshona.

The successes of Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island came at a price because the co-authors came to be seen as political artists of great power, a reductive tag Fugard was not prepared to accept. As argued, he was interested in poetry and not politics in the plays, the middle-ground he had chosen. He inculcated a strong sense of aesthetics in the minds of his actors. Kani and Ntshona also tried to avoid the (common) reductive political label and their reduction to black actors who basically supplied materials instead of being co-authors (Cima 2009:94). Kani's Nothing But the Truth (2002) and Missing (2014) demonstrate his literary acumen, securing him a place in the literary canon of his country. Unlike the black artists in the country, Fugard avoided open confrontation by not pitching his tent with any of the contending groups.

Fugard refused to alter his stance and moved more in the direction of a universal rather than an embodied artist. As outlined earlier in the article, this cannot be far removed from his crisis of identity. His characters, Sizwe and Winston, experience this crisis. In The Island, Winston doubts his ideals and role and why he is even incarcerated on Robben Island: 'why am I here ... fuck the others ... fuck our ideals' (Fugard 1993: 221). In Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, Sizwe's 'dishonourable' switch of name equally results in a crisis of identity and the attendant confusion: 'Robert ... Sizwe ... I'm all mixed up. Who am I?' (Fugard 1993: 185). There is normally an attendant crisis when truly playing - in real-life or fiction - the role of another person. Fugard's attempts to rediscover himself by speaking for a different class is characterised by this crisis. The journey to self-discovery is a long and tough one; it typically involves difficult choices, especially when the individual is faced with an opposing force. Fugard had his own hard options and he chose to restrict his identity to the private sphere. His art allowed him to protest the injustices of the system and retain a more universal (rather than particular) position concurrently. His crisis of identity was historical as well as intended - intended because he refused a singular identity as that could violate his tenets of liberal polity and reduce his status to a regional anti-apartheid artist.

The different facets of restriction and containment in Fugard's art

The state constituted an opposing force for artists and activists in South Africa. It contained and determined individual thoughts and action, such that several artists were forced into self-censorship. There were two obvious choices for artists: (1) write undesirably and get arrested, or, in the least, have your work restricted or banned, or (2) overlook and bypass the censorship laws in the country, and so suffer the consequences. Artists such as Fugard had to make tough choices and operate underground so as to perhaps avoid censorship and survive the ugly days. The influence of the historical period on the thoughts, safety, and production or composition process cannot be overlooked here. The apartheid state had an unprecedented power to crush and contain individual thoughts and ideals.

Fugard's choice of content, form and survival strategy was in part informed by his awareness of the fact that the state could impose a ban on his art, or even arrest and imprison him. This ultimately forced him into self-censorship, considering that his driving motive was to get his plays performed, and not banned. His fears, limitations and drive are detailed in Notebooks (1983), which gives insight into his thoughts about the apartheid state and his work in theatre. He understood the role of art in the liberation process and was aware that politics impinge on the creative process. Fugard was aware of the restrictions in the country but was driven by the need to contribute more on reporting what was happening on the ground - than to tell the truth and not 'bear false witness' (Coetzee 1992:370). His failure to write more productively about the underdog and the struggle as was expected of the arts at that time depended on his experience and skin colour. It also had a lot to do with his literary and ideological leanings. As such, his interpretation of events and what he wanted to see happening in the country differed from the struggle for black freedom (Maponya 1987:7). Fugard, just like Barney Simon, talked about a different kind of freedom for black South Africans.

Black audiences in the townships were not really interested in race relations or the possibility of a non-racial society. They were more 'interested in getting their freedom before they could even talk about non-racialism', as against the more liberal audience members in the cities who praised protest 'works that would make statements against apartheid as opposed to statements about liberation and about the land going back to whom it belongs' (Ndlovu 1987:6). In The Blood Knot, for example, the concern is with race relations, a theme that interests an audience in the city, but that is not the concern of township audience. This shows that Fugard was only an involved-witness, unlike the black artists who were victims of the system. The differences in commitment between white artists and black artists at the time lay in their status in society: while white artists witness and report, black artists were direct victims. Manaka ( 1987) states the roles of black artists:

We are not just witnesses; we are also victims. We also throw stones. Whatever happens, if you are supposed to put on a show, and there is a war going on, you become part of that war ... Sometimes, you are organising a play, you are going to put on a show in the township, and then you get involved in organising a bus boycott and you have forgotten that you have got to go and do a show. You've got to join those people, so theatre becomes an integral part of the resistance in the country. We do not see it as separate ... (p. 6)

The artist-victim tag determined the scope and content of plays by black people, one that Fugard dissociated himself from by producing multidimensional plays that are more of poetry than politics. Art, in the liberal sense of the word, requires detachment from statements and events. It is this that accounts for the major differences in the reception or interpretation of plays by Fugard (even his protest works) compared with those by black dramatists in the country. Fugard's detachment from events did not, however, render his dramas less potent or apolitical, although his passion about the liberation of black people could not be compared with that of his actors because they were part of the so-called victims of apartheid. He worked on his own terms and helped his actors to make sense of the world and events around them more creatively.

Fugard's detachment from immediate events certainly affected his works, but it also allowed him to recount the events without the evident bitterness inherent in the works of black artists. His plays are considered valuable, universal and fit to be included in the South African drama canon, partly because he avoided propaganda and journalistic reporting common at the time. He was nonetheless an involved-witness who crossed the line, although he did not throw stones like black people who are artists (labelled as rebels), who openly resisted and subverted the authority. He was also not so keen about black liberation in the way his black actors were. Kani's and Ntshona's passion to narrate and/or stage the black story affected Fugard, tilting his art towards politics, since working with them meant recording or detailing bitter black experiences. The accounts in The Island are entirely black prison experiences; the improvised newspaper scene in Sizwe Bansi Is Dead is also an expression of black life and trauma. The actor-creators in these plays were able to improvise and recreate the events because they were closer to their real experiences as black South Africans.

It is the detailed black experiences in Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island (even in The Coat) that qualify them as Fugard's most political dramas. These plays evidently vary from his Port Elizabeth and post-Statements dramas because of the materials, actors and processes involved in their creation. The double-edged sword of criticism of Fugard's plays is thus not surprising considering the intricate context and events with which he was dealing. The restrictive system and containment policies in place in his country added to his problems. The post-Sharpeville period from the 1960s onwards, for example, was so intense that even white liberals were not spared the wrath of the regime. It was around this period that Fugard, along with his family, returned to the country and thereafter worked closely with the Serpent Players from 1963. As a young émigré living in London with his wife, he bought a one-way ticket back home at a time when 'many liberal whites sought refuge in Europe from the massive police campaign mounted against all opponents of the regime' (Smith 1974:1).

This sort of dogged commitment was unusual from white liberals under apartheid, of course apart from the few white dissidents who chose to remain under the harsh clouds and support the black struggle. Liberalism under apartheid suggests a limit to one's involvement, whether for racial, political or economic ends. It did not, all the same, equal non-commitment to a cause, but an awareness of certain limits, which also depended on the knowledge of the restrictive measures that could hamper their active participation. It was equally informed by a sense of identity: as white people, liberals could not escape the limits of their identity and place in a country so divided along racial lines; in fact, it took the better part of their activities. As Walder ( 1993:121) points out, the 'near-total hegemony of the white minority created by apartheid has meant that white liberals and other dissidents [...] are part of the structures of domination they oppose'.

Fugard enjoyed certain privileges as a white person and that created a cloud of suspicion from critics and many black dramatists who argued that he 'consigns his truth to a certain epistemological standpoint that makes him a partial witness, despite his protestations to the contrary' (Olaiya 2008:78). Hence, the restriction was multifaceted: on the one hand were the strict censorship legislations, and on the other, the awareness of identity (group affiliation) and the need to play safe. This in a way explains why many black artists, and some critics, questioned the roles of liberals and collaborators who are white in South Africa, but whose roles in the anti-apartheid struggle cannot be undermined. This influential group played an active role in ways they could and still felt safe, carving a space for themselves in-between the contending groups: white and black people.

Fugard avoided the much emphasised subversion and large-scale insurrection; he also refused to channel his art to the sole interest of the revolution. It appears that, like most white people, he was also aware that the benefits of apartheid far outweighed the inconveniences for white people. Instead of agitating for violence, he utilised the theatre as a viable means of attaining individual freedom. His apparent equivocation was not only tied to the censorship and state laws, he had also doubts about the revolutionary crude tactics and calls for violence and sacrifices. He defied, almost entirely, the idea that every revolution comes at a price, resulting in victims who must lay their lives on the line for the struggle to succeed such that he was considered by some critics as 'being lukewarm or not radical enough' (Skordis 2003:99). The critics have, in a way, 'failed 'to to acknowledge that an artist may be forced to give up political correctness for larger political ends' (Skordis 2003: 99).

Fugard argues that a good art has more impact on the individual and group psyche than rebellion and violence might. His non-commission and choice of scope enabled him to contribute to the struggle in many other ways, although his approach to art went contrary to the expectations of the time. Fugard ( 1983:183) states that he strove 'consciously and deliberately for ambiguity of expressions because it is superior to singleness of meaning and reflects the nature of life'. It is critics who mistake his ambiguous intentions with a non-committal stance, thus failing to realise that had his works been that acerbic, they may not have been produced at all and 'may not have made an effective appeal to their audiences' (Skordis 2003:99).

Conclusion

This article identified that adopting a single, unambiguous and political position is restrictive: it defines the writer's identity and leanings, takes away his veil, reduces his status and limits his contributions. Fugard avoided this given dimension by adopting a multidimensional style that allowed him to maintain liberal polity tenets by transcending politics and propaganda and the limits imposed on the arts. Survival, value and a fitting place in the arts were central to his choice of literary style and practice of the experimental collaborative theatre from 1963. This article revealed that even his most political collaborative works have a survivalist inclination - a form of liberal technique characterised by dodges and evasions. It argued that their apparent ambiguous statements enabled him to avoid the unnecessary face-off with the authorities. He utilised his mostly black actors as conduits to materials he was, at first, denied access to at the time and as participants in the stories because he could not bring himself to fully being part of the struggling masses.

Furthermore, the article stated that his actors, Mokae, Bryceland, Kani and Ntshona, for example, were the main sources of most of his stories: from the learning-plays, Nongogo and No-Good Friday, to The Coat, and subsequently Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act and The Island. It was established that he overcame the diverse facets of restriction, to a certain point, through his collaboration with actors. Collaboration had often been his most potent way of making political statements. Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island survived the dangerous time not only because they were collaborative plays without an easily identifiable author and statement, but equally because they were unscripted, experimental and improvised pieces during their early runs. The article concluded that Fugard's contributions to the alternative theatre in the country outweigh the limitations of his non-partisan position and liberalism.

Acknowledgements

We declare that we have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced us in writing this article.
Authors' contributions
This article was created from S.B.'s PhD thesis with K.M.G. as the supervisor.

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Footnotes

1. These three plays make up the Statements plays. Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island were devised in close collaboration with the black actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona. The first version of Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act (which premiered at the opening of The Space Theatre in Cape Town) was also devised with considerable assistance of the actress Yvonne Bryceland.

2. The less-privileged and downtrodden in society, mainly black people.

3. Hodgins queries Fugard's detachment and liberal position in his early plays before the 1970s (see Hodgins 1967).

4. Coetzee speaks of Fugard's dilemma of commitment because of his fear of risking his integrity as an artist in the mid-1960s (see Coetzee 1992).

5. For Kavanagh, apart from Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island, the rest of Fugard's plays were subjective and bourgeois in nature and emphasised resistance to racial oppression instead of revolt against apartheid (see Kavanagh 1985).

6. Mphahlele argues that Fugard committed an act of omission by suggesting that a situation was bad without suggesting ways out of the man-made problem (see Mphahlele 1967).

7. The term 'black' here is used to represent black people, mixed-race people and Asians in South Africa during apartheid.

8. This sector of the population formerly ruled South Africa (see Walder 2015).

9. In white South African terms, he is culturally a bastard.

10. Athol Fugard starred as Father Higgins in No-Good Friday.

11. In South Africa, townships refer to the often underdeveloped and segregated areas that were reserved for black people, mixed-race people and Indians.

12. Zakes Mokae, Lewis Nkosi, Bloke Modisane, Don Poho, Can Themba, Nat Nakasa and Ken Gampu. These artists later became writers.

13. Note that this point will be substantiated on page 8.

14. Fugard recounts that Sizwe Bansi Is Dead was developed from a celebratory image of a naive black man, obviously wearing his best suit and smiling broadly, despite the troubles of the time. Fugard, Kani and Ntshona then developed the play in 2 weeks, with polishing here and there over time (see Taylor 1974).

15. The source of this contradiction will be discussed later in the paper.

16. The Blood Knot, Boesman and Lena, Hello and Goodbye.

17. A Lesson from Aloes, People are Living There, Dimetos, The Captain's Tiger, Master Harold and the Boys.

18. Albert Camus was born in Drean (then Mandovi) in French Algeria on 07 November 1913 of Breton and Spanish parentage; Fugard also had a mixed parentage. Camus was brought up in North Africa and had many jobs there before moving to Metropolitan France. From 1848 to 1962, the Mediterranean region of Algeria was administered as an integral part of France. Camus's experiences were quite similar to Fugard's in many ways; he notably influenced Fugard's practice and ideology about the revolution. Camus was active in the resistance during the German occupation and became the editor of the clandestine paper Caligula - a name of one of his pre-war plays Caligula (1939). He, however, abandoned politics (and journalism) and devoted himself to writing.

19. Samuel Beckett was an Irish avant-garde writer and director who believed in a minimalist theatre. He is regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, and wrote in both English and French. The Theatre of the Absurd had one of its early roots in Beckett.

20. Eugene Ionesco was a Romanian-French avant-garde playwright.

21. Arthur Adamov was the chief exponent of Theatre of the Absurd. The political elements in his later works were influenced by Bertolt Brecht.

22. Norman Ntshinga and Welcome Duru were among the hard-core black actors who made up the Serpent Players of New Brighton. They were both arrested and incarcerated on Robben Island.

23. Buntu is aware of the troubles Sizwe Bansi may likely face and surmount when he 'surgically' exchanged the photographs in the two passbooks.

24. The performance took place at the Space Theatre in Cape Town on 08 October 1972.

25. The plays were published decades after the success of Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island.

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afrikaans; language; research; text; taal; film; translation; world; mens; films; gender; people; isizulu; human; political; students; black; press; social; werk; plays; cultural; apartheid

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Literator publishes research articles and essays on linguistics and literature in general, but focuses in particular on the (comparative) study of South African languages and literatures and other cultural phenomena across language, media and cultural boundaries (examples of topics would be: different manifestations of Post-Modernism, the interaction between visual arts and literature, the representation of the South African War in literature, language attitudes and language policy).

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-"Master Harold and The Boys" (1982) and "The Road to Mecca" are two of his most recent plays and the most well known of all his plays.
-He was not only a playwright but also an actor.
-He wrote his last play "The Captain's Tiger" on 1999 when he was 67 years old.
-He is currently 88 years old.
https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/harold-athol-fugard

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Fugard started writing in his school years, inspired by stories told by his father and his own reading. HE went to the University of Cape Town, where he studied philosophy, but he longed to explore the world, as he believed he would need that knowledge for a writing career. He would eventually return after a couple years, beginning to write his first plays in Cape Town, which would be staged in private performances as it wouldn't interest producers at that time.

Bibliography: https://achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/

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His parents were both descendants from European settlers (English, Irish and Dutch). Second, of three siblings. Fluent in both Afrikaans and English.

His father was a jazz pianist who had a childhood accident that left him with certain disabilities. He washed the troubles away with alcohol; the mother took responsibility for supporting the family. She opened a small general store and later, a small cafe (which provided the setting for Fugard's "Master Harold... And the boys").

His father identified with South Africa's National Party, which supported and implemented compulsory racial separation. His mother never agreed with this and was slightly verbal about her values towards Fugard.

Athol Fugard worked two years in a steamers ship in East Asia, which he wrote about in an autobiographical play called The Captain's Tiger: a memoir for the stage.

He studied Philosophy and Social Anthropology in the University of Cape Town, where he met his wife (who was a drama student). They married years later when Fugard returned from his time in the ship.

Worked as a clerk in a Native Commissioners' Court, becoming familiar with the injustices that the apartheid resulted in  first hand. Also, he became close with renowned anti-apartheid figures that influenced his political postures; this was later reflected on his political and controversial plays.

Was an alcoholic until the early 80's. Since then, he follows absolute substance abstinence.

Black friends introduced him to Sophiatown which was a segregated town that was the inspiration for two of his plays. Worked as a stage manager in order to gain theatre understanding and experience.

Inquiry Q: Can the experience of a man in another century be relevant today?

Yes. Definitely so, because history tells the stories and lives of humans of the past, which shape modern day societies. Furthermore, many people's previous experiences resonate with the lives of people today, though not necessarily in terms of the context of the struggles. They resonate in the sense that human nature has had similar questions and troubles in regards to their identities, values, morals and accepted systems so individuals in absolutely different timely and spatial circumstances may find themselves questioning human issues or have similar emotions.

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Hailed as "the greatest active playwright in the English-speaking world," South Africa's Athol Fugard has won international praise for creating theater of "power, glory, and majestic language." In more than 20 plays, written over six decades, he has chronicled the struggles of men and women of all races for dignity and human fulfillment.

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Group 2: Fugard professionally & inspiration/motivation to write the play.

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Group 2: Fugard professionally & inspiration/motivation to write the play.

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Fugard Professionally (career):

Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and awarded the Order of Ikhamanga Silver.

He studied philosophy in the University of Cape Town but dropped out.

After university, he travelled through Africa as a merchant.

He then worked as a radio journalist, commissioner of Johannesburg, and stage manager.

In 1958 he organised a multiracial theatre and wrote, directed and acted in various of its plays.

In 1962 he publicly denounced apartheid and the segregation of theatres. This caused police and the government to restrict and surveil him and his theatre, causing him to publish plays outside of South Africa.

In the 60s, he created the group The Serpent Players, which consisted primarily of black men. The group performed a variety of different plays due to the inaccessibility of accessing plays in general and other forms of literature.

The author is as well an accomplished actor who played “Jan Smuts” part in the Film  Gandhi in 1982 .

A list of Fugard’s Plays:
1958 No-Good Friday
1959 Nongogo (Prostitute)
1961 The Blood Knot, updated as Blood Knot in 1985
1965 Hello and Goodbye
1968 People are living there
1969 Boesman and Lena
1971 Orestes
1972 Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act
1968 Sizwe Bansi is Dead improvised by Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona
1973 The Island
1975 Dimetos (revised 1976)
1978 A Lesson from Aloes
1982 "Master Harold”...and the boys
1984 The Road to Mecca
1985 Blood Knot (revised as, The Blood Knot)1987 A Place with the Pigs
1989 My Children! My Africa!
1993 Playland
1996 A Valley Song
1999 The Captain's Tiger
1973 The Island

Inspiration/ motivation to write the play:

He was born in South Africa at the same time the Apartheid was being established.

When he worked as commissioner he got very familiarized with the oppressive system. He identified the many flaws of the system.

The South African government at the time confiscated his passport to prevent him from travelling to England to present his plays. Later on, they banned his work, forbidding  publications and performances.

His first work  was a play called “The rehearsal Room” which was focused on rejecting segregation in South Africa. This motivated him to keep writing on the subject even if his plays were not as recognized.

His work called the attention of actors Danny Glover and James Earl Jones, which would later play the characters in “Master Harold ...and the boys”

Master Harold ...and the boys involves biographical aspects, whilst still being a work fiction

Links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athol_Fugard

https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/harold-athol-fugard

https://achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/#:~:text=Athol%20Fugard%20discusses%20his%20life,and%20practice%20of%20Tibetan%20Buddhism.

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Athol Harold was born in Middleburg, South Africa on 1932. When he was three years old, his family moved to Port Elizabeth (an industrial city in the Indian coast). In 1938 he started attending a primary school called Marist Brothers College. Then, he entered the University of Cape Town, studying philosophy and social anthropology. However he dropped out before he finished his studies, to travel around Africa and the world. Then, he found a job as a court clerk, where witness the destruction of humans by the apartheid system.

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Athol Fugard, born Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard in the remote village of Middleburg on 11 June 1932, grew up in Port Elizabeth. His father was Afrikaner and his mother English-speaking.

Fugard enrolled at the University of Cape Town but did not finish his studies, dropping out to travel in Africa and the world. He found work on a ship, and travelled around the world for two years before returning home. He found a job as a court clerk and through this was able to witness the destruction on humans by the apartheid system.

Athol Fugard started writing after a brief spell at acting. His first work in theatres was a piece called the The Rehearsal Room. Fugard wrote, acted, and directed this play which with its multiracial cast openly rejected segregation in South African theatres. This led to most of his works being banned by the government.

In 1958, Fugard produced No Good Friday. In this play Fugard shared the stage with Zakes Mokae. This play was followed by (Prostitute) in 1959. In the 1960s, Fugard returned to Port Elizabeth where he partnered with The Serpent Players. The following year he wrote his first international success The Blood Knot. This play confronted apartheid so effectively that the government withdrew his passport.

However, this did not stop Fugard from supporting an international boycott against South Africa. The government later relaxed the restriction, allowing him to visit England to direct a play he had written, Boesman and Lena. Another play, A Lesson from Aloes won him an international award in 1980 from the New York Critics Circle.

Even though Fugard is lesser known in South Africa, his plays have attracted the attention of actors Danny Glover and James Earl Jones, who acted in The Blood Knot and Master Harold "¦and the Boys.

Fugard is an accomplished actor, having played Jan Smuts in the famous film Gandhi. He continues to write and act, his latest work being The Captain's Tiger published in 1999.
A list of Fugard's Plays:
1959 Nongogo (Prostitute)

1961 The Blood Knot, updated as Blood Knot in 1985
1968 People are living there
1972 Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act

1968 Sizwe Bansi is Dead improvised by Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona

1975 Dimetos (revised 1976)

1978 A Lesson from Aloes

1982 Master Harold"¦and the boys

1985 Blood Knot (revised as, The Blood Knot)

1987 A Place with the Pigs

1989 My Children! My Africa!

1999 The Captain's Tiger

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Athol Fugard, born Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard in the remote village of Middleburg on 11 June 1932, grew up in Port Elizabeth. His father was Afrikaner and his mother English-speaking. Fugard enrolled at the University of Cape Town but did not finish his studies, dropping out to travel in Africa and the world.

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Apartheid from the perspective of black South Africans.

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Apartheid from the perspective of black South Africans.

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“I was born in South Africa during apartheid, a system of laws that made it illegal for people to mix in South Africa. And this was obviously awkward because I grew up in a mixed family. My mother's a black woman, South African Xhosa woman... and my father's Swiss, from Switzerland.” - Trevor Noah

“We had to forge an alliance of strength based not on colour but on commitment to the total abolition of apartheid and oppression; we would seek allies, of whatever colour, as long as they were totally agreed on our liberation aims.” - Oliver Tambo

“Our target is not negotiations, it is the end of the apartheid system. There can be no compromise about that.” - Oliver Tambo

“We should have sent the apartheid monsters to jail, not let them off with an amnesty.” - Winnie Madikizela-Mandela

https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/apartheid-quotes

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How was it received in South Africa?
- It was banned for its criticism of the social moral in the country. It was banned by the Publications Control Board.
- Initially, it was considered immoral, offensive and obscene.
- The play was presented during the  apartheid era, so it was not received at all.

- It was officially presented in South Africa in 1983, a year after it was first presented. It  moved audiences and exposing the racism in South Africa.

How was it received around the world?
In the US, the play was praised by critics and newspapers. It was presented in the Yale repertory in 1982 and it moved the spectators.

The New York magazine writer John Simon in May of 1982, wrote an article of the play praising it for it’s style, message and for its original way of portraying racism and segregation.

The play is considered to be Fugard's best, and has earned more than 300 reproductions, and two films through the years.

It was better received in the US.

Links:
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/24/theater/by-master-harold-stuns-johannesburg-audience.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/12/10/world/south-africa-temporarily-lifts-ban-on-master-harold-play.html#:~:text=The%20text%20of%20the%20play,''

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"In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights." - Desmond Tutu

"We had to forge an alliance of strength based not on colour but on commitment to the total abolition of apartheid and oppression; we would seek allies, of whatever colour, as long as they were totally agreed on our liberation aims." - Oliver Tambo

- Segregation and discrimination could be seen everywhere, mainly related to relationships, education, opportunities, and human rights. This segregation defined people's lives from the start, where families and couples were separated because of their skin color/race, people were denied healthcare and education, and the minority of the population (the white population) dominated the country.
https://www.history.com/news/apartheid-policies-photos-nelson-mandela

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Apartheid had a series of racial and social policies, all aiming to separate the South African people and racial groups.
Main policies were Separating white and nonwhite South African people in any possible way, such as forcing them to use separate public facilities, setting specifically white living zones, government jobs were limited to white people only, and there could be no interracial marriage.

https://www.history.com/topics/africa/apartheid#:~:text=Who%20Started%20Apartheid%20in%20South%20Africa%3F,-Racial%20segregation%20and&text=Their%20goal%20was%20not%20only,to%20decrease%20their%20political%20power.

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Everything from marriage to beaches was segregated. Even though the white population was the minority, they were the ones in power and created laws that discriminated and segregated against the black majority.

The Apartheid lasted from 1948 until 1991, ended by Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk, who was at the time President of South Africa.

These were incredibly dark times for Black South African people at the time. With laws actively oppressing them, they were treated horribly and it took them decades of non-violent protesting to end the Apartheid. Under the false pretense that the laws were supposed to allow the growth of black people apart from the white people, it only further pushed black people into poverty and depression. They couldn't travel to the city without a passport, they couldn't set up businesses in white areas, they couldn't marry or even have relations with people outside of their race, they created 10 communities where black people were forced to inhabit and lost their SA citizenship and thus their voting rights, they couldn't access higher education, and more.

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Apartheid is the name of the policy that ruled relation between white minorities and black mayorities in South Africa during the 20th century. This policy consisted from beaches exclusively  for white people, hospitals only for europeans and white people, secluded areas where non-white people couldn´t enter and much more racist secluding restrictions for black people.

Apartheid had a negative impact in many diffrent ways during the 20th century in South Africa, affecting from children's to adult's mental health and phisical wellbeing. Black children often saw their parents be murdered and assasinated or torturated by white people in front of their faces which apart from generating an enormous trauma it generates a post traumatic disorder that many children had to live with daily. All of this rules and policies against non-white people generated a vision of european and white people where sometimes non-white children started to think that white people where suerior because of the way that they where being treated. Failies often used to be broken and taken apart and children had to live the rest of their life without their parents generating many psicological traumas and scars.

Sources
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0002713809602533
http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/9368
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00117733#:~:text=Apartheid%20has%20negatively%20affected%20the,children%20may%20be%20the%20result.

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Apartheid policies and supporters values

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Apartheid policies and supporters values

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Apartheid supporters where white supremacists and people who really cared about their status quo. They believed that white people where superior to other races and thus should dominate them.
Although they wanted to have control over everything and separate each race (apartheid policies) in some cases they were not able to achieve that. For example, in the economy white people were dependent on black labor, since they did not want to get their hands dirty. They wanted to remain with the status of superiority.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/apartheid

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- Apartheid means separation or apartness in afrikaans
- It was a set of racist laws and policies that lasted about 50 years, kind of like a South African equivalent of the North American Jim Crow Laws
-Said policies included:
-Outlawing of interracial marriage and sexual relationships
-government appropriation of black land in exchange for small amounts of monetary compensation
-the exclusion of blacks from South African citizenships

Those who supported the Apartheid also supported:
-the idea of inherent racial superiority
-segregation
-the status quo
-racism

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Athol Fugard was known for descriptions of the racial segregation in his country.

That being said, he had a major interest in connecting with large audiences, and an important group of people. Hence, he decided to write plays and later on, novels.

Also, Fugard was very interested in conveying direct and strong political messages, especially regarding apartheid. He was interested in the interpretation of his plays by the audience, in order to develop different views on apartheid. This was also complemented by the fact that he had to be discreet and could not directly display, a anti-apartheid work.

Biases: consequence of his high interest and role as a south african male of white privilege, Fugard has stated that he is a writer who describes the themes and actions of the outrages and defiances that go according to the south african context. Furthermore, he states that these are the only things he has been able to write about. This seems like biases on Fugard's behalf, sh he clearly has a highly evident inclination to wards the apartheid, and especially the segregation lived. As a result, his plays might cause the audience to perceive a rather non objective perspective of the situation lived.

https://biography.yourdictionary.com/athol-fugard