The Dramatic Art of Athol Fugard: From South Africa to the World

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Indiana University Press, 2000 - Drama - 273 pages

"Albert Wertheim's study of Fugard's 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 Fugard's dramas, showing that they are more than a dramatic chronicle of South African life and racial problems. Beginning with the specifics of his homeland, Fugard's 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 Fugard's 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.

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Contents

Early Work and Early Themes
1
The Port Elizabeth Plays The Voice with Which We Speak from the Heart
17
THREE Acting against Apartheid
69
Fugards First Problem Play
100
The Drama as Teaching and Learning Trauerspiel Tragedy Hope and Race
117
The Other Problem Plays
153
Writing to Right Scripting Apartheids Demise
177
Where Do We Where Do I Go from Here? Performing a New South Africa
203
NOTES
239
WORKS CITED
259
INDEX
267
Copyright

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About the author (2000)

Albert Wertheim is Professor of English and of Theatre and Drama at Indiana University. He has published widely on modern and classic British and American drama and on post-colonial writing; directed several NEH seminars on politics in the theatre and on new literatures from Africa, the West Indies, and the Pacific; and served on the editorial boards of American Drama, Theatre Survey, South African Theatre Journal, and Westerly.

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