Fugard on Theatre and Politics
You can’t answer violence with counterviolence…The answer is love. The best sabotage is love.
Time: Theater: May 17, 1982
Now I think that at the minimum theatre has been responsible for maintaining awareness and a certain conscience about the way things were developing. But, more importantly, I believe it has been a provocation in terms of social change.
Allen, Paul. Interview with Athol Fugard
This question: Can I any more work in a theatre which excludes `Non-Whites’ — or includes them only on the basis of special, segregated performances — is becoming increasingly pressing. […] I think my answer must be “No.”
June 1962 - Fugard, Athol. Notebooks: 1960-1977.
In the theatre of course my fascination lies with the ‘living moment’ — the actual, the real, the immediate, there before our eyes, even if it shares in the transient fate of all living moments. I suppose the theatre uses more of the actual substance of life than any other art. What comes anywhere near theatre in this respect except possibly the painter using old bus tickets, or the sculptor using junk iron and driftwood? The theatre uses flesh and blood, sweat, the human voice, real pain, real time.
July 1963 - Fugard, Athol. Notebooks: 1960-1977.
I have been asked many times […]: “How could you as a white presume to write about the black experience?” The answer to both is the same: there is one truly winged aspect of our natures that allows us to escape the confines and limits of our own personal experience and penetrate others that we never have–the human imagination. My own personal interpretation of the Prometheus legend is that imagination is the real fire he stole for us from the gods.
Fugard, Athol. Cousins: A Memoir.
I am totally unacceptable, a radical nationalist Afrikaner politician because of the attitudes I have. And I know that both within South Africa now, and certainly in the exiled black community outside of South Africa, I am regarded in a very, very uncertain light. Inside the country my old style liberalism is not radical enough; outside the country I’ve gone on to be an embarrassment because, so far, in terms of theater at least, I appear to have been the only person who has got around to talking about black realities in South Africa, and I’ve got a white skin. On the surface — plays, less so with music — exist, or rather are justified, by that first perspective — the audience. It it’s not to amuse them, it’s to enlighten them, or instruct, or to increase their awareness.
July 1963 - Fugard, Athol. Notebooks: 1960-1977.
Operative in the white theatre in this country is every conceivable dignity — audience, producer, actor, ‘professional’ etc. — except human dignity. (59-60)
June 1962 - Fugard, Athol. Notebooks: 1960-1977.
What I do know is that art can give meaning, can render meaningful areas of experience, and most certainly also enhances. But, teach? Contradict? State the opposite to what you believe and then lead you to accept it?
In other words, can art change a man or woman?
No.
That is what life does. Art is no substitute for life. It operates on top of life — rendering experience meaningful, enhancing experience. Art — meaningfully ordered. Life — chaotic.
If there is any argument which makes sense to me it is that the plays must be done and the actors seen (even on a segregated basis) not for the sake of the bigoted and prejudiced —but for the sake of those who do believe in human dignity. Let us not desert them. For those who do believe, Art can impart faith.
June 1962 - Fugard, Athol. Notebooks: 1960-1977.
–Compiled by Kelli Marino, Production Dramaturg
