The Division of Theater and the African Studies program are partnering for two weeks to honor the works of famed South African playwright Athol Fugard.
For about 40 years, the South African government, under National Party rule, enforced the apartheid system to politically and socially segregate the races. South African playwright Athol Fugard put them together on the same stage.
The Ohio University Division of Theater and African Studies Program are partnering for a two-week festival titled “Fugard at OHIO,” which includes live productions and film screenings.
Fugard is known for his personal and political writing exploring the human and political aspects of apartheid in South Africa. The South African government often banned productions of his plays and confiscated Fugard’s passport in the 1960s.
The festival begins Wednesday afternoon with opening remarks from Zakes Mda, a professor of creative writing in the OU English department and Fugard’s close friend for many years. Mda said he plans to outline the context of Fugard’s work so audiences can properly understand where the stories are coming from.
“(Fugard) is regarded as the greatest living playwright in the English language today,” said Mda, who also works with Fugard as an artist in residence at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in South Africa. “His influence is not just in South Africa but all over the world. He’s a mammoth figure.”
The idea for the festival began in summer 2014 during OU’s last affiliated season with the Monomoy Theatre in Cape Cod. One of the eight shows performed at the summer stock theater was Blood Knot, a Fugard play about a pair of black and white brothers that analyzes the idea of brotherhood and looks at the way people treat and affect one another.
Shelley Delaney, head of performance for OU, was the director of the Monomoy production. She said it was halfway through rehearsals when she knew she wanted to recreate the piece on campus.
“It’s the most I’ve ever connected with a role and the first time I’ve really felt like I was getting to use my craft and what I’m learning to really say something,” said Jared Davis, a third-year graduate actor who is reprising his role as white brother Morris in Blood Knot.
Because it’s an additional play, there was no funding for it. Delaney looked to partner with the African Studies Program and found Michael Ofori, who had organized a performance of Sizwe Bansi is Dead, a Fugard play, for one night at ARTS/West in spring 2014.
Ofori, a doctoral student in the Interdisciplinary Arts program who got his master’s in African studies from OU, will direct and act in Sizwe Bansi is Dead, which runs during the second week of the festival.
The play deals with issues of identity with the Population Registration Act of 1950 in South Africa that required every person to register as black, white or colored (mixed).
“The law identifies you as black, and it doesn’t matter what you think of yourself,” Ofori, who is from Ghana, said. “Which identity is it? The one society thinks he is, or the one he thinks he is?”
The festival concludes Jan. 20 with a symposium, featuring five professors from different departments, called “Apartheid Aftertaste: Contemporary Realities in the Works of Athol Fugard.” Delaney, who is on the panel, said the symposium will explain why Fugard’s work is not only relevant to South Africa, but also to America.
“The (apartheid and National Party) regime is over, but there are certain elements we need to learn from and know,” Ofori said. “There are parallels happening in our time that we need to look at.”
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