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Athol Fugard
Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard OIS (/ˈæθəl ˈfjuːɡɑːrd/; 11 June 1932 – 8 March 2025) was a South African playwright, novelist, actor and director. Widely regarded as South Africa's greatest playwright and acclaimed as "the greatest active playwright in the English-speaking world" by Time magazine in 1985, he published more than thirty plays. He is best known for his political and penetrating plays opposing the system of apartheid, some of which have been adapted to film. His novel Tsotsi was adapted as a film of the same name, which won an Academy Award in 2005. Three plays he wrote, and two plays he co-authored, were nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play.
Fugard also served as an adjunct professor of playwriting, acting and directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego.
Fugard received many awards, honours and honorary degrees, including the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver from the government of South Africa in 2005 "for his excellent contribution and achievements in the theatre". He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1986. Fugard was honoured in Cape Town with the 2010 opening of the Fugard Theatre in District Six. He received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement in 2011.
Fugard was born as Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard, in Middelburg, Cape Province (now Eastern Cape), Union of South Africa, on 11 June 1932. His mother, Marrie (née Potgieter), an Afrikaner, operated a general store and then a lodging house; his father, Harold Fugard, of Irish, English and French Huguenot descent, was a former jazz pianist who had become disabled.
In 1935, his family moved to Port Elizabeth. In 1938, he began attending primary school at Marist Brothers College.
Fugard attended Port Elizabeth Technical College for his secondary education from 1946 to 1950, then studied philosophy and social anthropology at the University of Cape Town on a scholarship. However, he dropped out of the university in 1953, just a few months before final examinations.
Fugard left home, hitchhiked to north Africa with a friend and in Port Sudan, aged 18, enrolled in the crew of the steam ship SS Graigaur. On board, and bound for Japan, he began writing a novel, but deciding it was terrible, threw the manuscript into the sea. He "celebrated" his two years as a merchant seaman in his 1999 autobiographical play The Captain's Tiger: a memoir for the stage.
In September 1956, he married Sheila Meiring, a University of Cape Town Drama School student whom he had met the previous year. In 1958, the couple moved to Johannesburg, where Fugard worked as a clerk in a Native Commissioners' Court. He became "keenly aware of the injustices of apartheid", and befriended local anti-apartheid activists, an experience that was to colour his earliest work.
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Athol Fugard
Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard OIS (/ˈæθəl ˈfjuːɡɑːrd/; 11 June 1932 – 8 March 2025) was a South African playwright, novelist, actor and director. Widely regarded as South Africa's greatest playwright and acclaimed as "the greatest active playwright in the English-speaking world" by Time magazine in 1985, he published more than thirty plays. He is best known for his political and penetrating plays opposing the system of apartheid, some of which have been adapted to film. His novel Tsotsi was adapted as a film of the same name, which won an Academy Award in 2005. Three plays he wrote, and two plays he co-authored, were nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play.
Fugard also served as an adjunct professor of playwriting, acting and directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego.
Fugard received many awards, honours and honorary degrees, including the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver from the government of South Africa in 2005 "for his excellent contribution and achievements in the theatre". He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1986. Fugard was honoured in Cape Town with the 2010 opening of the Fugard Theatre in District Six. He received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement in 2011.
Fugard was born as Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard, in Middelburg, Cape Province (now Eastern Cape), Union of South Africa, on 11 June 1932. His mother, Marrie (née Potgieter), an Afrikaner, operated a general store and then a lodging house; his father, Harold Fugard, of Irish, English and French Huguenot descent, was a former jazz pianist who had become disabled.
In 1935, his family moved to Port Elizabeth. In 1938, he began attending primary school at Marist Brothers College.
Fugard attended Port Elizabeth Technical College for his secondary education from 1946 to 1950, then studied philosophy and social anthropology at the University of Cape Town on a scholarship. However, he dropped out of the university in 1953, just a few months before final examinations.
Fugard left home, hitchhiked to north Africa with a friend and in Port Sudan, aged 18, enrolled in the crew of the steam ship SS Graigaur. On board, and bound for Japan, he began writing a novel, but deciding it was terrible, threw the manuscript into the sea. He "celebrated" his two years as a merchant seaman in his 1999 autobiographical play The Captain's Tiger: a memoir for the stage.
In September 1956, he married Sheila Meiring, a University of Cape Town Drama School student whom he had met the previous year. In 1958, the couple moved to Johannesburg, where Fugard worked as a clerk in a Native Commissioners' Court. He became "keenly aware of the injustices of apartheid", and befriended local anti-apartheid activists, an experience that was to colour his earliest work.