Statements

Developed in workshops with award-winning actors, these works in Fugard's canon most directly confront the dehumanizing brutality of apartheid.

The tragic personal consequences of life under South Africa's apartheid laws are treated with honesty and deep compassion in these three landmark plays written and premiered in the early seventies.

World-renowned dramatist Athol Fugard, along with his actor collaborators John Kani and Winston Ntshona, explored the painful particulars of their native land and created works with universal implications--plays that carry within them ringing cries for social and political change without ever uttering a word of political rhetoric.

Sizwe Bansi Is Dead reveals the perversities of human identity in a country where a man is equal to his passbook. The Island celebrates the strength of man's connection to man, even within the dehumanizing confines of a prison cell on Robben Island. Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act depicts the shattering of two lives under the harsh glare of South Africa's miscegenation laws.

The New Yorker has said of Athol Fugard, "A rare playwright, who could be a primary candidate for either the Nobel Prize in Literature or the Nobel Peace Prize." His major works for the stage include: Blood Knot; "Master Harold"...and the boys; My Children! My Africa!; A Lesson from Aloes; The Road to Mecca; Valley Song; and The Captain's Tiger.