The Dramatic Art of Athol Fugard From South Africa to the World [Paperback]

Albert Wertheims study of Fugards plays is both extremely insightful and beautifully written... This book is aimed not only at teachers, students, scholars, and performers of Fugard but also at the person who simply loves going to see a Fugard play at the theatre. Nancy Topping Bazin, Eminent Scholar and Professor Emerita, Old Dominion University

Athol Fugard is considered one of the most brilliant, powerful, and theatrically astute of modern dramatists. The energy and poignancy of his work have their origins in the institutionalized racism of his native South Africa, and more recently in the issues facing a new South Africa after apartheid. Albert Wertheim analyzes the form and content of Fugards dramas, showing that they are more than a dramatic chronicle of South African life and racial problems. Beginning with the specifics of his homeland, Fugards plays reach out to engage more far-reaching issues of human relationships, race and racism, and the power of art to evoke change. The Dramatic Art of Athol Fugard demonstrates how Fugards plays enable us to see that what is performed on stage can also be performed in society and in our lives; how, inverting Shakespeare, Athol Fugard makes his stage the world.

Introduction

1. Early Work and Early Themes
2. The Port Elizabeth Plays: The Voice with Which We Speak from the Heart
3. 'Acting' Against Apartheid
4. Dimetos: Fugard's First Problem Play
5. The Drama as Teaching and Learning: Trauerspiel, Tragedy, Hope and Race
6. The Other Problem Plays
7. Writing to Right: Scripting Apartheid's Demise
8. Where Do We, Where Do I, Go from Here?: Performing a New South Africa

Works Cited
Index

Wertheim's study has two particular strengths (among many): its insight into the evolution of the playwright, especially the influence of Albert Camus, Bertolt Brecht, and Samuel Beckett on Fugard's canon, and its illumination of the symbolic props in the plays, e.g., the shoes anlC