International fame

What I call “the Statement plays” – including Sizwe Banzi is Dead and The Island – made his reputation worldwide. Time magazine would call him the greatest living playwright writing in English.

These two plays were workshopped with black actors from the New Brighton township – John Kani and Winston Ntshona and others. They had a theatre group but they came to request that he help them make better plays. The Serpent Players were formed and they workshopped their own life experiences. Like on the ship, ethnicity didn’t matter, what mattered was who you were and how you connected with each other.

Sizwe Banzi must take on the role of a dead man in order to survive – to use his pass book to be able to find work. The Island is about staging a Greek tragedy on Robben Island, the political prison where South Africa’s first black president Nelson Mandela was held. Mandela would later say how important this play was as a reflection of the struggle for democracy and how people managed to survive despite the worst conditions.

Later plays

Unlike mainstream commercial theatre, Fugard’s plays continued to be intended for small-scale, rough conditions. This is seen even in later plays like ‘Master Harold’ and the Boys.

This is even though his plays were being put on worldwide, in translation as well. I once saw a production of Sizwe Banzi in Arabic done by Palestinians.

He once said that the thing that mattered to him was to raise the problem of how we may love one another without exploitation.

‘Master Harold’ and the Boys is about his childhood as a white boy in the boarding house his mother worked at, with two black male servants. At the climax of the play, the boy Hally (using the author’s own nickname) spits in one man’s face. When the two black men dance together at the end they show the possibilities for harmony despite white anger and resentment. How black people had to come together in order to survive.

Fugard produced over 30 plays in his life, some in collaboration and with the help of his favourite actors. He relied enormously on his fellow performers. He created many great female roles, especially with the actress Yvonne Bryceland.

Bearing witness

A final play to mention is The Train Driver (2010), a post-apartheid play. Two actors, one black, one white, play several different roles in a cemetery for people whose names were not known when they died.

A white train driver has witnessed a mixed-race woman commit suicide by standing in front of the train on the tracks with her children. He is tormented by what he witnessed. It’s a very bleak play and yet there’s a sense that somehow something will survive despite the worst conditions.

After formal apartheid, it didn’t mean that racism or exploitation had disappeared. Fugard saw what was beneath the laws. He saw the people who were affected.

Something he said right at the beginning of his career was that all his theatre needs is:

The actor and the stage. The actor on the stage. Around him is space, to be filled and defined by movement and gesture. Around him is also silence, to be filled with meaning, using words and sounds. And at moments, when all else fails him, including the words, the silence itself.

He used the phrase “bearing witness” quite often. It can be applied to a lot of great art, it bears witness to the times. Bearing witness to something with such depth and intensity that there’s a recognition of what it means and an understanding of the situation out of which it arises.

All Fugard’s people – tramps, discarded people, poor people, people on the fringes – they are connected with all the people we know of today who are refugees. Who are going around the world looking for a safe home. His work helped people to understand the world we live in and the human condition.

Dennis Walder is an Emeritus Professor of Literature at The Open University. This article first appeared in The Conversation

SUNDAY TRIBUNE