From the archive: On fountain pens and lessons from Athol Fugard

South Africans are mourning the death of playwright Athol Fugard who died today, 5 March, 2025. Anthony Akerman wrote this living tribute to Fugard on the occassion of his 90th birthday. We republish it today as reflection of a life that inspired many.

In 1968, partially brain-dead after nine months in the army, I enrolled for a BA degree at the Pietermaritzburg campus of the University of Natal. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, but took Psychology because I’d told my dad I might go into advertising. 

In res, I became friends with Mark Stannard and spent part of the July vac at his dad’s place in Munster near Port Edward, where he taught me to water-ski on the Mtamvuna River. Mark wasn’t averse to name-dropping and, no doubt trying to impress me, said, “My mother’s friends with Athol Fugard’s wife.” I stared at him blankly. “Who?” 

“He’s a playwright,” said Mark, “and they live in Schoenmakerskop near PE. They’re so poor they can’t afford a fridge.”

Playwriting didn’t sound like such a great career choice. The only other playwright I’d heard of was William Shakespeare and he’d definitely never had a fridge. 

Later that year, I went to see a Shakespeare play at the University Theatre, Howard College, in Durban. I only did so because the play – Henry V – was an English set work and I thought if I saw it I wouldn’t have to read all those impenetrable iambic pentameters. When the Chorus stepped out on the stage and spoke the first lines, I suddenly knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life – and it wasn’t coming up with catchy slogans to sell peanut butter. 

Someone should have told me acting was as precarious a profession as playwriting, but my parents didn’t know anything about either profession. However, my dad did insist that I finish my degree so I’d have something to fall back on. I told him I wanted to switch to Rhodes University because I’d been told they had the best English Department in the country. 

The real reason was that if I got out of Natal, I wouldn’t have to do monthly parades with my citizen force unit, the Natal Field Artillery. I decided to major in Speech and Drama and encountered some really boring playwrights. 

I had a walk-on part in a play by the Roman playwright Plautus. He was supposedly one of the world’s first comic playwrights, but the only joke in his repertoire was having two people look identical. The audience wasn’t exactly rolling in the aisles. 

After reading a medieval morality play called Everyman by a guy called Anonymous, I started to wonder if advertising wouldn’t have been a better career choice after all. 

Then, just before returning to Rhodes to start second year, I heard about another play at the University Theatre. It was Boesman and Lena and had been written by Mark Stannard’s mother’s friend’s husband. I’d occasionally heard his name mentioned at Rhodes because he was friends with one of my English lecturers, Don Maclennan. Apparently, Don and Athol Fugard used to fish together while discussing Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. I had no idea what to expect, but it couldn’t possibly be more boring than a medieval morality play.

I took my seat in the auditorium, feeling more at home than I had two years previously when I entered this theatre to see Henry V. The curtain was open; it seemed like someone had forgotten to turn off “the workers” – the overhead halogen lights – and three shabby stage managers were sorting through a pile of rubbish on the stage. Why hadn’t they done this before they let the audience in? One of the stage managers was even smoking in the theatre! But then he pinched out the cigarette and put the stompie behind his ear while the other stage manager loaded a lot of the junk onto his back. 

The woman tied a white doek around her head and the stage manager started walking. But he didn’t walk off stage. He started walking around the outer perimeter of the stage and continued this circular movement, and the woman started following him. The workers were switched off, the house lights dimmed and cross-faded with the stage lighting as they continued their walk. Eventually the man stopped and let the pile of junk on his back slide to the floor. 

The woman looked around in disbelief and said, “Here?” Boesman (Athol Fugard) cleared his throat and spat on the ground while an exhausted Lena (Yvonne Bryceland) sat down, dug something out from between her toes and spat out the words, “Mud! Swartkops!” 

What followed turned out to be the most riveting experience I’d ever had in a theatre. 

I’d never been exposed to theatre that was modern, South African and politically relevant. Although essentially a love story in which an abused woman finds her voice, the play also exposed the inhumanity of apartheid’s forced removals under the Group Areas Act – the same Act that prescribed that the play itself could only be performed before segregated audiences and Outa – the old black man – had to be played by a white actor (Glynn Day), his ethnicity concealed by a balaclava and an army greatcoat. 

After that I read every play written by Athol Fugard and saw the productions he directed for The Serpent Players in New Brighton, as many of them were put on at the Rhodes Little Theatre. 

Because it was a “private theatre”, black actors were allowed to perform to racially mixed audiences – provided no tickets were sold, as that would have constituted a contravention of the Group Areas Act. 

Don Maclennan prefaced each performance with a little speech asking the audience to donate generously to the silver collection and, afterwards, some of us drama students cracked the nod and were invited to cast parties at his house where Don and Athol drank from a 5-litre demijohn of Tassenberg, while Sheila Fugard (Mark Stannard’s mother’s friend) sat intensely in a corner wearing a beret and looking how I imagined a Parisienne Existentialist would look. Perhaps she was just wondering when they’d be able to afford a fridge. 

There was an edginess to these cast parties. Consuming alcohol at racially mixed gatherings was against the law and we knew the Security Police were snooping around. They invariably attended performances and deliberately made no attempt to be inconspicuous. 

We stood around engaging in stilted conversation with actors from The Serpent Players, including John Kani, who made quite an impression when he turned to us drama students and said with a smile, “When the revolution comes, we’ll kill nice liberals like you last.” We took it as a joke and managed a nervous laugh, but – together with the prospect of military camps – it seemed yet another good reason for leaving South Africa as soon as I could. 

Before starting at the Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol, I spent six months in London immersing myself in theatre. In September 1973, I took my seat in the Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court and saw the first London preview of Sizwe Bansi Is Dead. That experience eclipsed the 100 plays I’d seen so far that year. Nothing had been as visceral, nothing as powerful, nothing as exciting. 

It seemed ironic that I’d come to the Mecca of World Theatre only to be most excited by a play from home. I introduced myself to Athol and reminded him of the cast parties at Don’s house. I don’t think he remembered me, but he was polite enough not to let on. When Sizwe Bansi went on a national tour, I saw it a few more times in Bristol and hung out with them like a groupie.

The following year, the Royal Court presented a South African Season of three plays. Two of them – Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The Island – were collaborations with John Kani and Winston Ntshona – developed through a process Athol characterised as “playmaking”. The third – Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act – was the first play he’d written alone in his workroom since Boesman and Lena. 

After seeing Ben Kingsley and Yvonne Bryceland in this production I knew I wanted to direct the play. It was a powerful indictment of an inhumane law and not an expensive play to stage: it required no set and the two leads were naked for most of the play. 

After I’d finished my studies, I met Conny Braam at the home of South African friends in London. I told her about Statements and asked if any Fugard plays had ever been done in Dutch. She thought not and – as chairperson of the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement – she would have known. I suggested I direct the play in Amsterdam and she said she’d see what she could do to make that happen.

That’s how I ended up going to Amsterdam. In 1976, the first play I directed professionally – in other words, the first play I was paid to direct – was Verklaringen na een arrestatie onder de Immoraliteitswet in a translation by the Dutch writer Bert Schierbeek. 

The original plan had been to go back to England after I’d directed the play, but I ended up staying for 17 years. During those years I directed five Fugard plays in Holland and one in Mexico. The last play I directed in Holland was