PublicPerspective is the PittsburghPnblicTheater's newsletterfor subscribers and friends. Athol Fugard: An Interview with the Playwright Athol Fugard was born in 1932 in Middleburg, South Africa. Between 1959 and 1979 Mr. Fugard wrote and co-wrote plays that include No-Good Friday, Nongogo, The Blood Knot(produced at Pittsburgh Public Theater in 1978), People are Living There, Hello and Goodbye, Boesman and Lena, Sizwe Bansi is Dead (produced at Pittsburgh Public Theater in 1976), The Island, Statements After an Arrest Under the Immortality Act, Dimetos and A Lesson From Aloes. Mr. Fugard has appeared in the films Marigolds in August and The Guest (for which he also wrote the screenplays), Gandhi, Boesman and Lena, and, most recently, The Killing Fields. In March 1982, the world premier of "MASTER HAROLD" . .. and the boys opened under Mr. Fugard's direction at the Yale Repertory Theater. The play moved in May to Broadway, where it received the Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics' Circle Award for Best Play and was nominated for Tony Awards for Best Play and Best Director. Although "MASTER HAROLD" . . . and the boys was banned from production in South Africa in December 1982, the ban was lifted the fol lowing year. A revival of The Blood Knot, directed by and starring Mr. Fugard, opened in September at the Yale Repertory Theater and is currently running on Broadway. Before a recent performance, I spoke to Mr. Fugard about his views on the current situation in South Africa. If you were writing "MASTER HAROLD" today, would Sam's character be as hopeful about the future of whites and blacks in South Africa? Well, in terms of writing "MASTER HAROLD," whether it was the writing of it as actually happened in the past or whether I wrote it today, I would feel a certain obligation to portray the character of Sam as I really knew him. Sam is not a fictional character. He's not acreation of my imagination. He's a man I actually knew and he's a man who had faith. Faith in people, in human nature. An ultimate faith in human nature and, therefore, an ultimate faith in the future. And however tragically misplaced that faith might be, if I were to write Sam now, I wou Id actually have to sti II reflect him as that sort of man. Do you still feel as positive as you once felt about the chances for a proc• ess of peaceful change in the system of apartheid? No, I must say that the past six months have been a very - very, very bitter and a very dark experience for me personally. I've hung on for as long as I could to the hope that the white regime in South Africa, that the Afrikaner in particular would wake up in time and realize what we all know he's got to realize. I think I've reached a point now where I realize that that is not going to happen. I've got to ac-
dence between an external reality and an internal reality and I'm not quite sure at the moment what my internal reality might be. I might, in fact, find myself at this point writing an il'}tensely personal play again. Not necessarily one that takes on the crude political realities of the present situation in South Africa. If there were any piece of information that you think people in Pittsburgh should know about what is happening in South Africa that they don't seem to know because of media coverage, what would it be? The extent to which, in South Africa, white needs black and black needs white. That it is going to be reduced very simply to a situation of oppressor and that people are going to see the situation simply in terms of oppressor and oppressed. They have radically oversimplified the situation. At one level that is, of course, a truth. It is only a part of the truth ; it's not the whole truth. This question ofmutLial dependence and need is a major factor in terms of South Africa and that is what makes the situation so tragic. That is what makes South Africa as a country and its present history and its predictable, forseeable future so tragic - because we had a chance. Mary G. Guaraldi
Athol Fugard as Jan Christiaan Smuts in the awardwinn ing film, Gandhi.
cept the fact that the Afrikaner Nationalist government is not prepared to share power and without having the preparedness to share power, I think the possibility of peaceful change in South Africa is non-existent. So often you've been quoted or articles have said about you that you love South Africa very deeply and you go there to refuel your creativity. What does this new view of the system there mean to you as a writer? Well, it doesn't change my feelings about South Africa. I've called South Africa home in the past. I still call it that. I think I will always call it that. Nothing that happens there can actually change my relationship to my country, the fact that I love it and that I love its people. I can only say in support of that that as soon as my stint with The Blood Knot on Broadway is finished - I don't know how long that's going to be yet, because the reviews have just come out and we're still trying to assess what our future is; I know I've committed myself for a maximum of six months - at the end of that, I go back home. I go back to South Africa. Do you have any projects planned that will deal with what's happening there now? No, no. You know one doesn't just write out of a response to an external. The event of actually writing a play is a combination of a lot of things which have got to coincide, in my case, before a play gets written . And the fact that there is an external situation that concerns and worries and traumatizes me is no guarantee that I will respond to that by way of writing something. There have got to be internal factors. There has got to be a coi nci-
January-February 19B6 The Critics And "MASTER HA ROLD" "In contrast to other recent plays by the author, "MASTER HAROLD" is, for all its seriousness of purpose, something of a celebration. It is suffused with warmth and flavored with engaging comedy, a lightness of spirit that we have not seen in the author's work since THE BLOOD KNOT . . . " -Mel Gussow, N.Y. TIMES "There may be two or three living playwrights in the world who can write as well as Athol Fugard, but I'm not sure that any of them has written a recent play that can match "MASTER HAROLD" . .. and the boys. Mr. Fugard's dram a - lyrical in design, shattering in impact - is likely to be an enduring part of the theater long after most of this Broadway season has turned to dust." -Frank Rich, N.Y. TIMES "MASTER HAROLD" . .. and the boys .. sends you out into the world's cold air, shattered but uplifted, even cleansed." -Clive Barnes, N.Y. POST
And ifs beautiful because that is what we want life to be like. But instead, like you said, Hally, we're bumping into each other all the time. Look at the three of us this afternoon . .. None of us knows the steps and there's no music playing. And it doesn't stop with us. The whole world is doing it all the time. Open a newspaper and what do you read? America has bumped into Russia, England is bumping into India, richman bumps into poorman. Those are big collisions, Hally. They make for a lot of bruises. People get hurt in all that bumping, and we're sick and tired of it now. It's been going on for too long. Are we never going to get.it right? ... learn to dance life like champions instead of always being just a bunch of beginners at it?
Public Perspective • Pittsburgh Public Theater • Pager
"MASTER HAROLD". . .and the boys Athol Fugard
" ' ASTER HAROLD" Latecomers Because there is no intermission during "MASTER HAROLD" . . . and the boys, those patrons who arrive after the start of the performance will be unable to sit in their assigned seats. Latecomers will be seated at specific intervals determined in advance by the director and only in easily accessible sitting and standing areas on the upper level. Please plan to arrive on time in order to insure your enjoyment of the show.