The Dramatic Art of Athol Fugard: From South Africa to the World (review)

From his first play, No-Good Friday (1958), to the present, Athol Fugard has been relentless in using his talent to affirm the good and condemn the bad. His genius, however, lies in his art. His plays are not preachy sermons, soon forgotten when the specific evils that provoked their writing are past; rather, he avoids the pitfalls of didacticism by managing to depict the universal in his particular works, reaching out to fundamental human problems of relationships, problems that transcend any particular relationship.

The virtue of Wertheim's analysis is to place Fugard's works within both the particular South African context and the general global context. It is an example of the best of the life-and-times-of literary genre. Fugard was born on 11 June 1932, of an Anglo-Irish jazz-playing crippled father and an Afrikaner mother, descended from Voertrekkers. He combined both of the dominant European strains in South Africa. His family moved to Port Elizabeth when he was three years old.

Beginning in 1958 with his first works, Fugard began producing plays with a racially mixed cast. His works attacked the evils of apartheid, thereby drawing fire for being too radical from conservatives and not being radical enough from liberals. What his critics failed to note was that he walked a tightrope, getting plays produced that attacked apartheid, featuring an integrated cast, and that were not banned. The plays managed to get their message across over the long haul.

Fugard's plays have documented the rise and fall of apartheid. They have changed as apartheid and its place in the world of repression have changed. Fugard is now struggling to find his place in postapartheid South Africa. It is this book's great merit that it forthrightly documents the periods of Fugard's creative life. Wertheim offers criticisms of Fugard's works, being clear about his overall evaluation of his oeuvre as worthy of comparison and ranking with other great playwrights of the twentieth century.

Wertheim follows a straightforward chronological presentation, moving from the earliest to the latest plays. Each receives a clear presentation. The reader who may not be familiar with Fugard's works is brought up to speed quickly and efficiently. Wertheim then analyzes each play, putting it directly into its total context. The actors and other theatrical personae are brought to life; their roles in the overall development of Fugard's works are made clear. The interaction of the play with the specific South African situation is made obvious, while the world's growing disgust with apartheid also enters into the equation.

The first of Fugard's plays that I saw in New York were Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island, written with John Kani and Winston Ntshona. The latter play demonstrates all of Fugard's talents: his playwriting, staging, directing, seeking new talent, organizing of theater groups, producing, acting, and whatever else it takes to create great theater. Wertheim captures something of the total experience:

But Sizwe Bansi Is Dead is not merely based on acting; it is about acting and about theatre. Influenced as he is by Brecht, Fugard never lets the audience forget that they are in the theatre, and the Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt is always at work. Indeed the Brechtian alienation and the metatheatrical style are among the contributions Fugard brings to bear upon material born of Kani's and Ntshona's personal lives. (p. 80)

Fugard's magical ability to peer into the lives of township people at the very time when he was banned from townships is a key part of his genius. Kani and Ntshona brought to Fugard their personal experiences in the township. With great empathy, Fugard was able to work with them to produce art as well as outrage at the evil of a system that subjugated people because of their skin color. Fugard encouraged improvisation&mdash...