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Athol Fugard honoured by English Academy

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Athol Fugard honoured by the English Academy

 

At the Gala Dinner of the English Academy Conference held at the Bloemendal Restaurant in Durvanville on , Athol Fugard, distinguished South African playwright, actor and producer, was awarded the English Academy Gold Medal for 2011 on 22 September this year.  The following was the citation which was read on the occasion:

 

Athol Fugard was born in Middelburg, Eastern Cape, South Africa in 1932 and grew up in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, with English as his mother tongue. He describes himself as an Afrikaner writing in English. He started writing plays and producing them with the support of his wife, writer Sheila Meiring, when he was disillusioned by the apartheid system of the day. During 1958 Fugard worked as a clerk in a Native Commissioners’ Court, an experience that further increased his awareness of the injustices of apartheid. Through his plays, Fugard transformed the unknown, ordinary people of his own small corner of the Eastern Cape into dramatic images of profound and lasting significance. As a writer, performer and director, Fugard combines his love of theatre with his moral concerns.  His collaborative work with performers across the racial divide during the years of apartheid not only helped to legitimise black experience as a form of cultural expression but has also had an enduring influence on South African theatre. The political impetus of Fugard’s plays brought him into conflict with the nationalist government and, to avoid prosecution, he was forced to have his plays produced and published outside South Africa.

 

Today Fugard is regarded as one of South Africa’s most important playwrights, with both a national and an international reputation. Despite their local origins and idiom, his plays enthral audiences across the globe and have won multiple awards. In 1988 Fugard was acknowledged by William A. Henry in Time magazine as the “foremost active playwright in the English-speaking world.” Initially famous as a campaigning dramatist who tackled issues of apartheid, Fugard continues to write about the problems facing post-apartheid South Africa under its constitutionally elected democratic government.  The Fugard Theatre, in The District Six area of Cape Town, South Africa, opened in February 2010 and a new play, The Train Driver, 2010, written and directed by Athol Fugard, had its world premier there to great critical acclaim in March 2010.

 

Although Fugard’s plays are always immersed in the politics of the day (apartheid and now post-apartheid), he never allows politics to affect his insight into people. Fugard’s characters are similar to those found in the works of Tennessee Williams, namely people with strengths and weaknesses which make them unable to fit into what society requires. Women occupy a dominant role in many of Fugard’s plays.

 

Fugard says of his work “[my] real territory as a dramatist is the world of secrets with their powerful effect on human behaviour and the trauma of their revelation. Whether it is the dark and destructive secret in Hester’s heart (Hello and Goodbye, 1965), the withering one in Boesman’s (Boesman and Lena, 1969) or the radiant secret in Miss Helen’s (Road to Mecca, 1984), they are the dynamos that generate all the significant action in my plays”.

 

Several of Fugard’s plays have been made into films, including among their actors Fugard himself. His film debut as a director occurred in 1992, when he co-directed the adaptation of his play The Road to Mecca with Peter Goldsmid, who also wrote the screenplay. The film adaptation of his novel Tsotsi, written and directed by Gavin Hood, won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006.

 

Fugard is the recipient of many literary awards, honors, and honorary degrees, including the 2005 Order of Ikhamanga in Silver “for his excellent contribution and achievements in the theatre” from the government of South Africa, he is also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.  As recently as September 2010, Fugard’s contribution to theatre and social reform was acknowledged at the Absa Fugard Festival held in Nieu Bethesda in the Karoo, South Africa, the setting for his well known play The Road to Mecca (1984).

 

Currently, Fugard and his wife live in San Diego, California, where he teaches as an adjunct professor of playwriting, acting, and directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego, while still maintaining their links with South Africa.

 


List of Athol Fugards achievements from 1956 to present day (in lieu of CV

(source:”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athol_Fugard“)

 

Plays (in chronological order of first production and/or publication)

Publications:

Co-authored with John Kani and Winston Ntshona

 

Co-authored with Ross Devenish

  • The Guest: an episode in the life of Eugene Marais. By Athol Fugard and Ross Devenish. Craighall: A. D. Donker, 1977. (Die besoeker: ‘n episode in die lewe van Eugene Marais. Trans. into Afrikaans by Wilma Stockenstrom. Craighall: A. D. Donker, 1977.

Filmography – Films adapted from Fugard’s plays and novel

Film roles

Selected awards and nominations

Theatre

o    1971 – Best Foreign Play – Boesman and Lena (winner)

o    1975 – Best Play – Sizwe Banzi Is Dead / The Island – Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona (nomination)

o    1981 – Best Play – A Lesson From Aloes (winner)

o    1988 – Best Foreign Play – The Road to Mecca (winner)

o    1983 – Best Play – Master Harold…and the Boys (winner)

o    1982 – Master Harold…and the Boys (winner)

o    1992 – Outstanding Revival – Boesman and Lena (winner)

o    1996 – Outstanding Body of Work (winner)

o    1999 – Theatrical Productions – The Road to Mecca (winner)[

o    2007 – Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play – Exits and Entrances (nomination)[

Honorary awards

o    1986 – Evelyn F. Burkey Memorial Award – (along with Lloyd Richards)

o    2005 – The Order of Ikhamanga in Silver – “for his excellent contribution and achievements in the theatre”

Honorary degrees