Early period
In 1958, Fugard organized "a multiracial theatre for which he wrote, directed, and acted," writing and producing several plays for it, including
No-Good Friday (1958) and
Nongogo (1959), in which he and his colleague black South African actor Zakes Mokae performed.
After returning to Port Elizabeth in the early 1960s, Athol and Sheila Fugard started The Circle Players, which derives its name from their influential production of
The Caucasian Chalk Circle, by Bertolt Brecht.
In 1961, in Johannesburg, Fugard and Mokae starred as the brothers Morris and Zachariah in the single-performance world première of Fugard's play
The Blood Knot (revised and retitled
Blood Knot in 1987), directed by Barney Simon.
In 1962, Fugard publicly supported the Anti-Apartheid Movement (1959—1994), an international boycott of South African theatres due to their segregated audiences, leading to government restrictions on him and surveillance of him and his theatre by the Secret Police, and leading him to have his plays published and produced outside South Africa.
Lucille Lortel produced
The Blood Knot at the Cricket Theatre, Off Broadway, in New York City, in 1964, "launch[ing]" Fugard's "American career."
- The Serpent Players
In the 1960s, Fugard formed the Serpent Players, whose name derives from their first venue, the former snake pit at the zoo, "a group of black actors worker-players who earned their living as teachers, clerks, and industrial workers, and cannot thus be considered amateurs in the manner of leisured whites," developing and performing plays "under surveillance of the Security Police."
Their plays utilized minimalist sets and props improvised from whatever materials were available; often staged in black areas for a night, the cast would move on to the next venue, such as a dimly-lit church hall or community center, where the audience consisted of poor migrant labourers and the residents of hostels in the townships.
According to Kruger,
the Serpent Players used Brecht's elucidation of gestic acting, dis-illusion, and social critique, as well as their own experience of the satiric comic routines of urban African vaudeville, to explore the theatrical force of Brecht's techniques, as well as the immediate political relevance of a play about land distribution. Their work on the Caucasian Chalk Circle and, a year later, on Antigone led directly to the creation, in 1966, of what is still [2004] South Africa's most distinctive Lehrstück [learning play]: The Coat. Based on an incident at one of the many political trials involving the Serpent Players, The Coat dramatized the choices facing a woman whose husband, convicted of anti-apartheid political activity, left her only a coat and instructions to use it.
In
The Coat, Kruger observes, "The participants were engaged not only in representing social relationships on stage but also on enacting and revising their own dealings with each other and with institutions of apartheid oppression from the law courts downward," and "this engagement testified to the real power of Brecht's apparently utopian plan to abolish the separation of player and audience and to make of each player a 'statesman' or social actor.... Work on
The Coat led indirectly to the Serpent Players' most famous and most Brechtian productions,
Sizwe Bansi is Dead (1972) and
The Island (1973)."
Fugard developed these two plays for the Serpent Players in workshops, working extensively with John Kani and Winston Ntshona, publishing them in 1974 with his own play
Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act (1972). The authorities considered the title of
The Island, which alludes to Robben Island, the prison where Nelson Mandela was being held, too controversial, so Fugard and the Serpent Players used the alternative title
The Hodoshe Span (
Hodoshe being slang for prison work gang).
These plays "evinced a Brechtian attention to the demonstration of gest and social situations and encouraged audiences to analyze rather than merely applaud the action"; for example,
Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, which "combined Brechtian critique and vaudevillian irony-—especially in Kani's virtuoso improvisation-—even provoked an African audience's critical interruption and interrogation of the action." While dramatizing frustrations in the lives of his audience members, the plays simultaneously drew them into the action and attempted to have them analyze the situations of the characters in Brechtian fashion, according to Kruger.
Blood Knot was filmed by the BBC Television in 1967, with Fugard's collaboration, starring the Jamaican actor, Charles Hyatt as Zachariah and Fugard himself as Morris, as in the original 1961 première in Johannesburg. Less pleased than Fugard, the South African government of B. J. Vorster confiscated Fugard's passport. Four years later, in 1971, partially as the result of international protest on his behalf, the South African travel restrictions against Fugard eased, allowing him to fly to England again, in order to direct
Boesman and Lena.
Later period
Master Harold...and the Boys, written in 1982, incorporates "strong autobiographical matter"; nonetheless "it is fiction, not memoir," as
A Memoir and some of Fugard's other works are subtitled.
Fugard demonstrates that he opposes injustices committed by both the government and by its chief political opposition in his play
My Children! My Africa!, which attacks the ANC for deciding to boycott African schools, based on recognition of the damage that boycott would cause a generation of African pupils.
His post-apartheid plays, such as
Valley Song,
a memoir for the stage and his latest play,
Victory (2007), focus more on personal than political issues.
The Fugard Theatre, in The District Six area of Cape Town, South Africa, opened with performances by the Isango Portobello theatre company in February 2010 and a new play written and directed by Athol Fugard,
The Train Driver, will play at the theatre in March 2010.
Fugard's plays are produced internationally, have won multiple awards, and several have been made into films, including among their actors Fugard himself.
His film debut as a director occurred in 1992, when he co-directed the adaptation of his play
The Road to Mecca with Peter Goldsmid, who also wrote the screenplay.
The film adaptation of his novel
Tsotsi (Afrikaans for
hoodlum), written and directed by Gavin Hood, won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006.
