Middleburg

Athol Harold Fugard is one of South Africa's most famous playwrights.

He was born in 1932 in Middleburg, a small village in a semi desert region of South Africa.At his grandmother's request, he was named Athol after a former British governor of South Africa, but when he was a child he was known as Hally.

His mother was an Afrikaner, whilst his father was a South African with English and Irish roots. Athol describes himself as an Afrikaner writing in English. When he was three years old, Fugard's family moved to Port Elizabeth, where the playwright has since spent most of his life.

He went to the University of Cape Town but dropped out just before the exams to hitchhike through Africa. Then he sailed around the world working on ships. After some acting experience he started writing plays, almost always set in South Africa and steeped in the politics of the day. However, politics never affects his insight into people.

Working in the court environment and seeing how the Africans suffered under the pass laws provided Fugard with valuable insights into the injustice and pain of apartheid. He started working with a group of black actors in Johannesburg and he wrote his first play No Good Friday.

In the early 1960īs Fugard returned to Port Elizabeth and worked with The Serpent Players, a group of actors whose first performance was in the former snake pit of the zoo. The political slant of his plays bought him into conflict with the government. In order to avoid prosecution, he started to take his plays overseas.

His plays have been regularly premiered and produced and he has won many awards. Some have been filmed. He made his directorial debut in 1992 with the film version of The Road to Mecca. In 2006 the film Tsotsi, based on his novel of that name, won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

One of his best known statements is: " I don't want to concern myself with the past. I lived in it too long".