Appreciation: Playwright Athol Fugard proved the pen could be mightier than the sword

W.H. Auden, meditating connected the relation of the creator successful a poem by W.B. Yeats, concluded that poesy “makes thing happen.” While mostly true, the precept doesn’t clasp successful the lawsuit of playwright Athol Fugard, whose assemblage of enactment helped alteration the past of his nation.

Born successful Middelburg, South Africa, successful 1932 to an migrant English begetter of Irish descent and a parent from an Afrikaner family, Fugard lived done the emergence and autumn of apartheid. His vocation brought an planetary spotlight to this strategy of radical segregation successful plays that afflicted consciences and fomented activism astatine location and abroad.

Fugard, who died Saturday astatine property 92, was portion of a absorption question successful South Africa that recovered its dependable successful the theater.

The signifier became 1 of the fewer places wherever the flames of dissent, militantly stomped retired successful different quarters of society, grew to a conflagration seen astir the world.

“At the tallness of the apartheid era, the Market Theatre successful Johannesburg and the Space Theatre successful Cape Town, some defiantly nonracial venues successful a racially divided country, produced shattering plays astir achromatic beingness nether the apartheid regime,” recalled playwright and manager Emily Mann successful a Times nonfiction reflecting connected Nelson Mandela’s bequest to the arts. Fugard, who was connected the beforehand lines of this activity, aboriginal acknowledged that, successful the South African case, the pen was so mightier than the sword.

Citizenship had supplied Fugard with his ngo arsenic a writer. But helium understood the quality betwixt creation and authorities and resisted anyone dictating his docket arsenic a playwright.

“No writer indispensable ever presume to archer different writer what his oregon her governmental responsibilities are,” helium told the Paris Review. “It is simply a poet’s close successful South Africa to constitute a poem that seemingly has nary governmental resonance.”

At the aforesaid time, helium recognized, successful a speech helium gave astatine Rhodes University successful 1991, that it astir apt wasn’t imaginable to “tell a South African communicative accurately and truthfully and for it not to person a governmental spin-off.” Complacency for him was unthinkable erstwhile a bulk of his chap citizens were denied their cardinal liberties.

But Fugard, who though chiefly known arsenic a playwright was besides an accomplished novelist, manager and actor, understood the limits of propaganda. Only art, unflinchingly committed to the truth, has the imaginable to power hearts and minds. He was determined to become, successful each his work, a witness.

The contradictions inherent successful his presumption arsenic a achromatic South African dissident became a root of melodramatic struggle successful his plays. Fugard couldn’t renounce his identity, but helium could scrutinize it with ruthless honesty, taxable it to imaginative tests and stock his ethical findings.

For each the governmental freight of Fugard’s works, helium was a profoundly idiosyncratic writer. It wasn’t truthful overmuch ideas oregon arguments that inspired his plays but quality beings successful each their messy complications.

His notebooks, bursting with images and anecdotes of real-life folks whose stories caught his attention, provided a storehouse for his plays. Fugard wasn’t successful a unreserved to construe this worldly to the stage. The figures successful his journals would person to hold until thing wrong him summoned them into theatrical action.

Before helium could inhabit the science of his characters, his ain science had to beryllium stirred. As helium explained successful his code astatine Rhodes University, “The Swedish writer [Tomas] Tranströmer has a enactment to the effect that erstwhile the outer lawsuit coincides with the interior world the poem happens. That is however it works for maine arsenic a playwright.”

Time and again it was the world of what Fugard called “human desperation” that inflamed his imagination. “Nobody has ever written a bully play astir a radical of blessed radical who started disconnected blessed and who were blessed each the mode through,” helium elaborated. “And successful South Africa if you person recovered a hopeless individual, 9 times retired of 10 you person besides recovered a hopeless governmental situation.”

Yet the autobiographical constituent is contiguous adjacent successful places wherever it mightiness look conspicuously absent. “Blood Knot,” the breakthrough play successful which helium recovered his dependable arsenic a dramatist, is astir 2 brothers from the aforesaid mother, 1 dark-skinned, the different light-skinned. Fugard, who took connected the relation of the light-skinned member other Zakes Mokae successful the 1961 Johannesburg premiere, has these siblings wrestle for their dignity and autonomy successful a one-room shack.

The genesis of the play, arsenic Fugard told the Paris Review, “had perfectly thing to bash with the radical concern successful South Africa.” He described the “seminal moment” arsenic the wrenching show of his member sleeping 1 night, an representation that filled his bosom with pity.

“My member is simply a achromatic antheral similar myself,” helium explained. “I looked down astatine him, and saw successful that sleeping assemblage and face, each his pain. Life had been precise hard connected him, and it was conscionable written connected his flesh. It was a scalding infinitesimal for me. I was perfectly flooded by my consciousness of what clip had done to what I remembered arsenic a arrogant and almighty body.”

The play, which radically recasts the fraternal relationship, developed acold beyond its originating impetus. “Blood Knot” parodies the charade of authoritative radical differences successful scenes successful which the brothers instrumentality turns donning a suit of achromatic man’s apparel purchased for a romanticist brushwood with a achromatic pistillate introduced via a idiosyncratic ad.

An aboriginal masterpiece, “Blood Knot” established a paradigm for Fugard, whose plays are distinguished by their tiny casts, static locations and tinderbox emotions. Just arsenic important is the relation of playacting. His characters whitethorn beryllium confined by their circumstances but their imaginations are acceptable escaped successful theatrical games, pantomimes and nostalgic reveries.

The brothers of “Blood Knot” lampoon the meaning of whiteness with costume choices. Young Haley tyrannically conducts “the boys” successful “ ’Master Harold’…and the Boys” to reenact memories of his childhood. The Black prisoners of “The Island” crook to Sophocles’ “Antigone” to recognize the injustice of their ain situation.

Theatrical trade was of preeminent value for Fugard, who was a little accepted dramatist than is often assumed. His poetic benignant varied with his thematic content, some of which were contingent connected the idiosyncrasies of his characters. The voices of his protagonists, which is to accidental the cadences of their societal identities, find not conscionable the dependable but the signifier of their stories. In upholding the sanctity of the spoken word, Fugard took his spot successful the oral contented of Homer.

Stylistically, helium contained multitudes. His aboriginal dramas from the 1960s — “Blood Knot,” “Hello and Goodbye” and “Boesman and Lena” — evoke the existential concerns of the Absurdist playwrights from the era. Yet the stark metaphysical truths of these plays are inseparable from their brutal South African context.

Fugard’s “workshop” plays from the aboriginal 1970s, devised with actors Winston Ntshona and John Kani, opened a much nonstop transmission to the lived world of Black South Africans. “Sizwe Bansi Is Dead” and “The Island” person the propulsive vigor of show art, registering their shocks to the assemblage done compression and earthy theatricality. “Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act,” though credited to Fugard alone, was developed on akin lines of guided improvisation and different techniques aimed at, successful the author’s ain words, “releasing the originative imaginable of the actor.”

Working successful absorption to apartheid laws placed Fugard successful ineligible jeopardy. His passport was seized aft a televised show of “Blood Knot” successful London successful 1967 and not returned until 1971. His enactment was banned by the authorities and helium and his household were placed nether surveillance.

Producing “Sizwe Bansi Is Dead” required not lone courageousness but ingenuity. “We felt that the play was acold excessively unsafe for america to spell nationalist with it; determination was the occupation of mixed audiences,” Fugard recounted successful the Paris Review. “So we launched the play by underground performances to which radical had to person a circumstantial invitation — a ineligible loophole successful the censorship operation successful South Africa, and 1 we continued to exploit for galore years.”

This “underground period” brought overmuch interference from the police. “They rolled up erstwhile oregon doubly and threatened to adjacent america down, apprehension america — the accustomed bully tactics of information constabulary anyplace successful the world,” Fugard said. “We conscionable persisted, carried on, and survived it. We yet did spell nationalist with ‘Sizwe Bansi,’ galore years later, but lone aft it had played successful London and New York. After that, we felt that the play’s estimation protected us.”

The extremity of apartheid successful the aboriginal 1990s transformed Fugard’s playwriting but didn’t rob him of his purpose. Always profoundly personal, his enactment became much conspicuously autobiographical. The fig of the author, typically a crotchety older antheral with an impish consciousness of wit and unabashed literate fervor, became a staple of his aboriginal work. But property didn’t mellow his subversive spirit. The enquiry into societal justness simply continued down much inward byways.

“Valley Song,” the top of the post-apartheid works, offers a lyrical meditation connected the quality outgo of change, the losses exacted by progress. Fugard, who was a potent motivation unit connected stage, performed the treble relation of Author and Buks, a mixed-race tenant husbandman who indispensable springiness his granddaughter the state to permission their location truthful that she tin prosecute her imagination of being a celebrated singer.

Fugard developed a beardown narration with L.A.’s Fountain Theatre, wherever his precocious plays recovered invited successful the benignant of grassroots situation of his aboriginal years. “After being impressed by the company’s L.A. premiere of “The Road to Mecca,” Fugard entrusted Stephen Sachs with the satellite premiere of “Exits and Entrances.” “Victory,” “The Blue Iris” and “The Train Driver” notably had their U.S. premieres astatine the Fountain.

“Working alongside Athol Fugard, directing his caller plays for 10 years, was a profound grant and 1 of the astir rewarding periods of my nonrecreational life,” Sachs, who retired past twelvemonth arsenic the Fountain’s co-founding creator director, wrote successful an email. “He painted connected a tiny canvas upon which 1 glimpsed the world.”

“The Painted Rocks astatine Revolver Creek,” which had its West Coast premiere astatine the Fountain, brings the Nelson Mandela-era mandate of information and reconciliation to the domain of idiosyncratic conscience. A comparatively tiny summation to his oeuvre, the play provides analyzable characterizations that are a acquisition to actors — a changeless of Fugard’s playwriting.

Fugard defined the essence of what helium called “pure theater” arsenic thing much “than the histrion and the stage, the histrion successful abstraction and silence.” As an creator helium resisted labels, but helium conceded that if his enactment is to beryllium categorized “then it indispensable beryllium arsenic ‘actors’ theatre.’ ”

Humanity was ever astatine the halfway of Fugard’s art. In “A Lesson From Aloes,” a quality quotes Thoreau: “There is simply a intent to life, and we volition beryllium measured by the grade to which we harness ourselves to it.” By this standard, Fugard was a exemplary to america all.