I was shocked to learn the famous South African writer Athol Fugard had been away. I recognized his age to 92, but I didn’t expect him to die. It was always surviving.
When I think about Fugard, the first thing that came to his mind, I met with him for the first time in South Africa. Was the first triple book I wrote in her plays.
I just saw her game Boesman and Lena In London. He knocked me with a completely emotional power.
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Boesman and Lena, two mixed races and walking the mud houses of a river and walk the mud apartments where they are where they are. Arguing and knocks and then the black man comes from the dark. They try to tell them their story, but they do not speak the same language.
The black man dies next to the fire. There is a moment when you decide to dance and sing Lena before entering the dark. This is a terrible moment, but it is a moment. Although people are the lowest level, there are some kind of transcriber.
Fegard interview stopped at the end of the day. Look, we put the Violo sets on top and sat in the dark. And he gossip:
Theater is like music. It is the rhythm that matters. If you can keep the rhythe properly, you can mean you want to say.
This would be in my mind forever.
The first year
Fegard was born in 1932 in a city called Middelburg in the semi-desert Karoo region of South Africa. His mother was Afrikaans (First Netherlands) and his father’s Irish appears in a background.
When the family was three years old moved to the shore. They were never well, in fact, often they were close to poverty. His mother helped to run a boarding house in Port Elizabeth port. Although an African house was sent to the English school and then to the university. Learned anthropology and philosophy. He decided to be a writer to leave only when the time arrived, so he did not finish his degree.
He and a friend rose to the north away from Africa. After that, he found a variety of work and spent 10 months on a board on a ship. According to him, all the various races and cultures on this ship allow him to see who is who. At the end, ethnicity does not matter. He was interested in what you are and how you are dealing with each other.
He was able to find a job in Johannesburg, established as a secretary in a special court apartheid the system. Apartheid divided the races. There should be black people under white minorities pass If they want to travel or work anywhere. This local commission trials for violators of the transition law. He said that this was the place where the main pessimism was grown.
Play
Began to friendship with people in a city called Sofiatown This race was mixed, but was a black settlement in the bottom apartheid White people were transferred. It began to play with friends.
I called these early plays “Sofiatown plays” because these black people are based on their experience. Was one Memo (for a moment for a sex worker) and the other was the other There’s no good Friday (To pay Friday) about the small town pirates – called TsotsisIt will then be a hood movie and is used for a novel that will win an Oscar.
His true progress came a few years later. At that time Sharpeville massacre Moved to write a game called in 1960 Blood button About two and a half-brothers, one more white, the struggles between them.
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The important thing is that no commercial theater is approaching. It was placed on this place Bantu Men’s Social Centerwhere black and white actors and viewers can be mixed.
To use black actors almost had a rope with his whole career. There were no drama schools for black South Africans, so it was the place of training in these plays.
International fame
What do I call ” Statement play “- including We heard dead and Island – made the reputation of the world. Time magazine would be call it Write the largest live playwright in English.
These two plays have been decorated with black actors from John Kani and Winston Ntshona and the others in John Kani and Winston. There was a theater group, but they came to ask them to help them make better plays. Shyanese players occurred and worked in their own life experiences. As in the ship, ethnicity was, and how you are and how you relate to each other and what was related to.
You must take the role of a dead man to live, you need to use the transition book to be able to find a job. The island consists of building a Greek tragedy Robben IslandPolitical prison where South Africa’s first black president Nelson Mandela been held. Then Mandelan tell This play was how important he was able to live in despite the struggle for democracy and the worst conditions of people.
Playing later
Unlike the main trade theater, Fugard’s play continued for small scale and rough conditions. This is playing as no later ‘Master Harold’ and boys.
This is also in the world, which is translated in its plays in the world. Once I saw youWe Banzi production in Arabic by the Palestinians.
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He once had a thing about him, to raise the problem of how we could love each other without exploiting.
‘Master Harold’ and the boys belong to their child as a white boy with two black male servants. At the top of the play, the boy Hally (using the author’s nickname) spits a man’s face. In the end of the two black people, they show the capabilities of harmonious despite the white anger and dissatisfied when they dance each other. Black people had to come together to live.
Fugard produced more than 30 plays in his life, some in cooperation and with the help of their favorite actors. He trusted his colleagues. Especially the actress created a very large woman roles Yvonne briseland.
Witness
A final game to celebrate Train driver (2010), plays a post-apartheid. Two actors, one black, a white and names play a few different roles in a cemetery for unknown people.
The White Train driver witnessed that he committed suicide in front of the train on the road with the children of a mixed race woman. Suffering because he witnessed. It’s a very bright game and still has a sense that one suddenly will survive, despite the worst conditions.
After the formal apartheid, there was no means of disappearance of racism or exploitation. Fegard saw things under the laws. Saw the affected people.
Something he gossip At the beginning of his career, the needs of the whole theater were as follows:
Actor and scene. The actor on the stage. The place around him is the place to fill and move and determine the gesture. Using words and sounds around, becoming full of meaning, meaning is also silent. All this, when everything fails, the words themselves are silent.
He often used the phrase “bear witness”. It can be applied to a very large art, witnessing periods. He has a concept of witnessing something that has such depths and intensity, what it means and understand the situation.
All Fegard people – tramps, people thrown, poor people, fringes – today are all about refugees. Who goes in the world looking for a safe house. His work helped people to understand the world and the situation of man.
