Athol Fugard (born 1932)

 

Athol Fugard (born 1932)
Athol Fugard is a huge success not just because his works are published from the 1960s to the 1980s, but also because he wrote plays that a large number of people loved watching. His plays were well-known for being realist dramas that portrayed society at the timed. He was clearly dissatisfied with his country’s sociopolitical condition and discovered that the only way he could protest was via his writing, which truly depicted society’s biases at the time. Most of his plays depict the severity of Racism in order to focus awareness on the horrific circumstances that African people suffered.
Realism the theatre is the total opposite of Romanticism. It is a type of theatre that depicts reality and can portray political events with differing viewpoints. This is a best description of Athol Fugard’s style. Fugard utilized realism to criticize the government and felt it to be a method to stand up to what he saw to be ethically wrong. He deployed emotional depictions of common circumstances to have people reflect on their own culture. It reflected South African culture at the time, and the government did not want one playwright’s views infecting South African culture at the time, and the government did not want one playwright’s views infecting the minds of the so-called “lower races”, mainly the Black and Indian people.
Master Harold and the Boys (1982)
     One of Fugard’s greatest works, ‘Master Harold and the Boys’, is set in South Africa’s apartheid period. The South African government, led by the National Party (NP), first condemned it because it rejects the bigotry and hatred of ordinary apartheid culture.
The play’s characters are representatives of South Africans at the time, with the black servant’s inability to communicate in appropriate English, the young white boy’s father’s alcoholism, and the African acceptance of a white ‘master’ treating them as inferiors and inflicting harm on them without justification. Anger and hatred are the two key themes that go through the play.
Sam, the lone African servant who has long been a victim of these stereotypes, has made an attempt to overcome the hatred and rage.
He acts as a surrogate father to Hally, teaching him great life lessons, bestowing wisdom on the youngster, and performing small, good deeds such as making a kite for him, all while Hally’s father drank himself to inebriation. After losing an arm in World War 2. Hally’s father became an alcoholic. The South African government’s policies in the mid-1950s permitted for a certain level of hostility and resentment between whites and blacks.
The act was vital in revealing to the audience everything wrong with their life. It demonstrated to white people that acting as if they were a superior race will lead to their demise in the future. It demonstrated to the African people that they should no longer let whites to have such tremendous influence over them, and that self-determination would be required in order to move away from the white race’s ultimate rule. Fugard felt that by creating a play like this, his audience would be able to relate to all of South Africa’s current events. The World War 2 has just finished, and Hally’s father had recently served in the war.
Racial segregation was impacting many people’s lives since all people were now categorized into certain races and then split into their own categories. The concept of supremacy vs. inferiority arose fast as a result of this categorization.
Whether a Black man or a White man was watching or reading this play, they would both be able to understand something from it in some ways. Fugard’s notions regarding inferior and superior races, and how they are merely tools for the government to maintain control over the South African people, would open their minds.
Fugard’s plays have not only inspired people to think beyond the box, but they have also given us, the audience, a glimpse into what life was like during the Apartheid era. We may examine the South African government’s dictatorial elements and how they employed the concept of superior vs. inferior races to elevate themselves to the top of the social hierarchy. Fugard has the ability to open our eyes to what our nation was like in the past, and he is always reminding us that we should never return to a place of segregation, pointless hatred, and relentless mistreatment of individuals of a different race. No race is superior to another, and Athol emphasizes this throughout the play.