Athol Fugard
Athol Fugard
Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard OISis a South African playwright, novelist, actor, and director who writes in English. He is best known for his political plays opposing the system of apartheid and for the 2005 Academy Award-winning film of his novel Tsotsi, directed by Gavin Hood. Fugard is an adjunct professor of playwriting, acting and directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego. For the academic year 2000–2001, he was the IU Class of...
NationalitySouth African
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth11 June 1932
Anybody who thinks there's nothing wrong with this world needs to have his head examined. Just when things are going all right, without fail someone or something will come along and spoil everything. Somebody should write that down as a fundamental law of the Universe. The principle of perpetual disappointment. If there is a God who created this world, he should scrap it and try again.
As fascinated as I was by words on paper, it was matched by my fascination with words in people's mouths. The spoken word. And that is the world of theatre.
You can't answer violence with counter violence ... The answer is love. The best sabotage is love.
Love is the only energy I’ve ever used as a writer. I’ve never written out of anger, although anger has informed love.
With so many young playwrights, the true craft of writing for living voices is not what it used to be. They write for attention spans of 10 minutes between adverts.
I've had one experience of writer's block in my life, and it was living hell. It was a terror for me.
You'll see that the strong, the affirmative, the positive voice in any of the plays I've written is that of a woman. My men are, well, not quite worthless, but they are certainly weak, and that reflects the reality I grew up with and what I think has in a sense shaped me.
People come to the Fountain Theatre because they've got hearts that are working and they've got heads that are working. They use the Fountain Theatre because it puts them in touch with the world that they're living in.
Nobody can take what I love away from me. I would like to believe that love is the only energy I've ever used as a writer. I've never written out of anger, although anger has informed love.
There are times in my 30 years in the theater that I have come perilously close to losing faith in the one form of action I have in this life.
The act of witnessing is important to me; somebody's got to tell the truth, you know what I mean?
Obviously when it comes to the question of telling stories about other people's lives in a situation as political as South Africa, you get to be political.
The toughest challenge I faced came right at the beginning of my career with 'Blood Knot,' which was trying to convince South African audiences that South African stories also had a place on the stage.
The reason I'm in San Diego is not because I want distance from South Africa but because I want proximity to the people I love. But I don't envy growing up in America. As ugly as aspects of it were, my biggest blessing was to be born a South African.