For more than 50 years, Legacy Playwright Athol Fugard has challenged
the world’s conscience with his incisive portraits of individuals
grappling with the intimate repercussions of systemic injustice.
L EGACY P R O G RA M
The Safest
Place in
the World
AN INTERVIEW WITH
Athol Fugard
“How one human being deals with another
remains the most critical fact in history,” he’s
said of his dramatic worldview, “You can kill a
man or you can bless him.” This distinct blend
of the personal and political first brought him
international acclaim with his groundbreaking
1961 play Blood Knot, and continues to motivate
his work to the present day. It’s also a quality
never more apparent than in “Master Harold” …
and the boys, which Fugard has described as one
of his most “nakedly autobiographical” plays.
Athol Fugard in
Port Elizabeth.
Photo by Paula Fourie.
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Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard was born in Middleburg, South
Africa, in 1932. When he was three years old, his family moved
to Port Elizabeth, the industrial city that would provide the
setting for much of his work. There, Fugard’s mother ran a
16-room boarding house and later the St. George’s Park Tea
Room, where “Master Harold” … and the boys is set. From his
father—a “gentle but weak” jazz pianist permanently consigned
to crutches due to a childhood injury—the young Fugard developed a love for both music and stories. Over the years, Fugard
indulged his growing passion for books at the Port Elizabeth Library, where he would hide his favorite novels amidst the theology section lest someone else check them out before he was
able. He also developed a lifelong interest in the world around
him, whether it was the microbes he watched with fascination
under his childhood microscope or the men and women he
passed each day on Main Street and who would one day come
to populate his plays. Fugard later described the relationship
between “that one little corner of South Africa” and the inspira-
tion for his characters: “I can stand on a street corner in Port
Elizabeth, look at anybody and…know where they come from,
where they’re going. I have a feel of the textures of their life.”
As Fugard—then known as “Hally”—grew into a young man,
South Africa began implementing its brutal racial regime of
apartheid, or “separateness.” Fugard experienced firsthand
the privileges conferred upon him by virtue of his white skin.
He also learned from his mother, an Afrikaner “gifted with a
natural sense of justice,” to question the profound inequities he
witnessed daily. At the same time, he developed lifelong friendships with two of the black men who worked for his mother,
Sam Semela and Willie Malopo. Semela in particular became a
father-figure to the young boy. On rainy days in the tea room,
the two discussed literature, science, philosophy, and sex.
When Fugard found himself humiliated by his father’s public
intoxication, it was Semela who cheered him up by constructing a make-shift kite. One day, however, after a rare argument
Fugard spat in Semela’s face. This moment haunted Fugard for
decades—and came to epitomize the confusion, helplessness,
and misplaced anger experienced by Hally in “Master Harold”
… and the boys.
Fugard crafted “Master Harold” … and the boys from these
myriad boyhood memories. First performed at Yale Repertory Theatre in 1982, the play has become one of the most
performed, read, and taught plays in the world. It’s been seen
twice on Broadway, across the U.S., in London, South Africa,
and around the globe. Longtime Fugard collaborators Zakes
Mokae and John Kani are just a few of the prominent actors to
have brought the play’s characters to life. Now, it is being given
a new production at Signature, directed by Fugard himself.
Before rehearsals began, he spoke with Literary Associate
Nathaniel French about the play’s inspiration, the challenges
of the initial production, and returning to the rehearsal room
34 years later.
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