Athol Fugard#Plays

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.{{cite web |last=Fisher |first=Iain |url=http://www.iainfisher.com/fugard/athol-fugard.html |title=Athol Fugard: Biography |work=Athol Fugard: Statements |publisher=iainfisher.com |access-date=1 October 2008}}Fisher gives Fugard's full birth name as "Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard", spelling Fugard's middle name as Lanigan, following Dennis Walder, Athol Fugard, Writers and Their Work (Tavistock: Northcote House in association with the British Council, 2003). It is spelled as Lannigan in Athol Fugard, Notebooks 1960–1977 (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2004) and in Stephen Gray's Athol Fugard (Johannesburg and New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982) and many other publications. The former spelling (single n) seems more authoritative, however, as it is also used by Marianne McDonald, a close UCSD colleague and friend of Fugard, in [http://www-theatre.ucsd.edu/TF/fugard.html "A Gift for His Seventieth Birthday: Athol Fugard's Sorrows and Rejoicings"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080724105820/http://www-theatre.ucsd.edu/TF/fugard.html |date=24 July 2008}}, Department of Theatre and Dance, University of California, San Diego, rpt. from TheatreForum 21 (Summer/Fall 2002); in Fugard's National Orders Award (27 September 2005) from the government of South Africa, presented to "Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard (1932 –)"; and in his "Full Profile" in Who's Who of Southern Africa (2007).

In 1935, his family moved to Port Elizabeth.{{cite book |first=Athol |last=Fugard |editor=Dennis Walder |title=The Township Plays |publisher=Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press, 1993 |isbn=978-0-19-282925-2 |pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=ybn4VLRLTMcC xvi] |year=2000}} (Google Books limited preview.) In 1938, he began attending primary school at Marist Brothers College.{{cite web|url=http://www.priory.co.za/content.asp?PageID=595|title=History: St Dominic's Prior School...Marist Brothers College|format=World Wide Web|publisher=St Dominic's Priory School|access-date=5 October 2008|archive-date=15 March 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090315140020/http://www.priory.co.za/content.asp?PageID=595|url-status=dead}}

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.{{cite web |url=http://www.enotes.com/boesman/author-biography |title=Boesman and Lena – Author Biography |access-date=31 October 2010}}{{cite web |url=https://archives.iu.edu/catalog/InU-Li-VAD6399 |website=Indiana University Archives Online |publisher=Indiana University |title=Fugard mss. II, 1976-2002 |access-date=11 March 2025}} 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.{{cite news |last=Norris |first=Barney |date=10 March 2025 |title=Athol Fugard was a dreamer, listener and master storyteller – on stage and at home |url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/mar/10/athol-fugard-died-aged-92-south-african-writer-barney-norris |access-date=11 March 2025 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}} He "celebrated" his two years as a merchant seaman in his 1999 autobiographical play The Captain's Tiger: a memoir for the stage.{{cite book |first=Albert |last=Wertheim |title=The Dramatic Art of Athol Fugard: From South Africa to the World |publisher=Indiana University Press |location=Bloomington, IN |isbn=978-0-253-33823-5 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/dramaticartofath0000wert/page/221 215], [https://archive.org/details/dramaticartofath0000wert/page/221 224–38] |year=2000}} (Google Books limited preview.)

In September 1956, he married Sheila Meiring, a University of Cape Town Drama School student whom he had met the previous year.{{cite journal |first=Sheila |last=Fugard |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0403/is_n4_v39/ai_16087644 |title=The Apprenticeship Years: Athol Fugard issue |journal=Twentieth Century Literature |volume=39.4 (Winter 1993) |publisher=findarticles.com |access-date=4 October 2008 |author-link=Sheila Fugard}} 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.

In 1958, Fugard organised "a multiracial theatre for which he wrote, directed, and acted", writing and producing several plays for it, including No-Good Friday (1958) and Nongogo (1959), in which he and his colleague, black South African actor Zakes Mokae, performed. In 1978, Richard Eder of The New York Times criticized Nongogo as "awkward and thin. It is unable to communicate very much about its characters, or make them much more than the servants of a noticeably ticking plot." Eder said, "Queenie is the most real of the characters. Her sense of herself and where she wants to go makes her believable and the crumbling of her dour defenses at a touch of hope makes her affecting. By contrast, Johnny is unreal. His warmth and hopefulness at the start crumble too suddenly and too completely."{{cite news|last=Eder|first=Richard|date=4 December 1978|title='Nongogo,' a Drama|newspaper=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/04/archives/nongogo-a-drama-early-fugard-work.html|access-date=10 May 2020|issn=0362-4331}}

After returning to Port Elizabeth in the early 1960s, Athol and Sheila Fugard started The Circle Players, which derives its name from the production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht.{{cite book|first=Loren|last= Kruger|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=s4Qizpti1Z4C|chapter=Chapter 5: The Dis-illusion of Apartheid: Brecht in South Africa|title=Post-Imperial Brecht Politics and Performance, East and South|series=Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre|publisher=Cambridge / New York: Cambridge University Press|pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=s4Qizpti1Z4C&pg=PA215 215–80]|isbn=978-0-521-81708-0|year=2004}} (Google Books.)

In 1961, in Johannesburg, Fugard and Mokae starred as the brothers Morris and Zachariah in the single-performance world première of Fugard's play The Blood Knot (revised and retitled Blood Knot in 1987), directed by Barney Simon.{{cite news|first=Mel |last=Gussow |url=http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?res=9C05E5D91439F937A1575AC0A963948260|title=Stage: 'The Blood Knot' by Fugard|newspaper=The New York Times|date=24 September 1985|access-date=5 October 2008|author-link = Mel Gussow}} In 1989, Lloyd Richards of The Paris Review declared The Blood Knot to be Fugard's first "major play".{{cite news|last=Richards|first=Lloyd|date=1989|title=Athol Fugard, The Art of Theater No. 8|journal=The Paris Review. Interviews.|volume=Summer 1989|issue=111|url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2416/the-art-of-theater-no-8-athol-fugard|access-date=10 May 2020|issn=0031-2037}}

In 1962, Fugard found the question of whether he could "work in a theatre which excludes 'Non-Whites'—or includes them only on the basis of special segregated performance—increasingly pressing". It was made more so by the decision of British Equity to prevent any British entertainer visiting South Africa unless the audiences were allowed to be multi-racial. In a decision that caused him to reflect on the power of art to effect change, Fugard decided that the "answer must be No" to segregation.

That old argument used to be so comforting; so plausible: 'One person in that segregated, white audience, might be moved to think, and then to change, by what he saw'.

I'm beginning to wonder whether it really works that way. The supposition seems to be that there is a didactic—a teaching through feeling element in art. What I do know is that art can give meaning, can render meaningful areas of experience, and most certainly also enhances. But teach? Contradict? State the opposite to what you believe and then lead you to accept it?

In other words, can art change a man or woman? No. That is what life does. Art is no substitute for life.{{cite book |last=Fugard |first=Athol |title=Notebooks 1960–1977 |date=1984 |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |location=New York |isbn=0-394-53755-6 |page=59}}

Of the few venues in the country where a play could be presented to mixed audiences, Fugard noted that some were little better than barns. But he concluded that under these circumstances, "every conceivable dignity—audience, producer, act, 'professional' etc.—" was "operative" in the white theatre except one, "human dignity".Fugard (1984), p. 60

Fugard publicly supported the call of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain for an international boycott of racially segregated South African theatres. The results were additional restrictions and surveillance. He began to have his plays published and produced outside South Africa. Lucille Lortel's production of The Blood Knot at the Off Broadway Cricket Theater in New York City in 1964 "launch[ed]" Fugard's "American career".{{cite web|url=http://www.lortel.org/LLA_archive/index.cfm?search_by=people&keyword=name&first=Athol&last=Fugard&middle=|title=Athol Fugard: Biography|publisher=The Internet Off-Broadway Database|access-date=2 October 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090315033734/http://www.lortel.org/LLA_archive/index.cfm?search_by=people&keyword=name&first=Athol&last=Fugard&middle=|archive-date=15 March 2009}}

In the 1960s, Fugard formed the Serpent Players, whose name derives from its first venue, the former snake pit (hence the name) at the Port Elizabeth Museum, "a group of black actors worker-players who earned their living as teachers, clerks, and industrial workers, and cannot thus be considered amateurs in the manner of leisured whites", developing and performing plays "under surveillance by the Security Police", according to Loren Kruger's The Dis-illusion of Apartheid, published in 2004.{{cite book|first=Loren|last= Kruger|chapter=Chapter 5: The Dis-illusion of Apartheid: Brecht in South Africa|title=Post-Imperial Brecht Politics and Performance, East and South|series=Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre|publisher=Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press|pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=s4Qizpti1Z4C&pg=PA215 217–18]|isbn=978-0-521-81708-0|year=2004}} (Google Books limited preview.) The group largely consisted of black men, including Winston Ntshona, John Kani, Welcome Duru, Fats Bookholane and Mike Ngxolo as well as Nomhle Nkonyeni and Mabel Magada. They all got together, albeit at different intervals, and decided to do something about their lives using the stage. In 1961 they met Athol Fugard, a white man who grew up in Port Elizabeth and who recently returned from Johannesburg, and asked him if he could work with them "as he had the know-how theatrically—the tricks, how to use the stage, movements, everything"; they worked with Athol Fugard since then, "and that is how the Serpent Players got together."{{"'}}Art is Life and Life is Art'. An interview with John Kani and Winston Ntshona of the Serpent Players from South Africa", in Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies [Internet], 6(2), 1976, pp. 5–26. Available from: [http://escholarship.org/uc/item/9qb6w2wz eScholarship], University of California. Retrieved 26 July 2017. At the time, the group performed anything they could lay their hands on in South Africa as they had no access to any libraries. These included Bertolt Brecht, August Strindberg, Samuel Beckett, William Shakespeare and many other prominent playwrights of the time.

In an interview in California, Ntshona and Kani were asked why they were doing the play Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, considered a highly political and telling story of the South African political landscape at the time. Ntshona answered: "We are just a group of artists who love theatre. And we have every right to open the doors to anyone who wants to take a look at our play and our work...We believe that art is life and conversely, life is art. And no sensible man can divorce one from the other. That's it. Other attributes are merely labels." They mainly performed at the St Stephen's Hall, adjacent to St Stephen's Church,{{cite news |last1=Fugard |first1=Athol |title=When Brecht and Sizwe Bansi Met in New Brighton |url=https://sthp.saha.org.za/memorial/articles/when_brecht_and_sizwe_bansi_met_in_new_brighton.htm |access-date=9 March 2025 |work=The Observer |publisher=Sunday Times Heritage Project |date=8 August 1982}} and other spaces in and around New Brighton, the oldest Black township in Port Elizabeth.{{cite news |last1=Coveney |first1=Michael |title=Athol Fugard obituary |url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/mar/09/athol-fugard-obituary |access-date=9 March 2025 |work=The Guardian |date=9 March 2025}}

According to Loren Kruger, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago,

the Serpent Players used Brecht's elucidation of gestic acting, dis-illusion, and social critique, as well as their own experience of the satiric comic routines of urban African vaudeville, to explore the theatrical force of Brecht's techniques, as well as the immediate political relevance of a play about land distribution. Their work on the Caucasian Chalk Circle and, a year later, on Antigone led directly to the creation, in 1966, of what is still [2004] South Africa's most distinctive Lehrstück [learning play]:The Coat. Based on an incident at one of the many political trials involving the Serpent Players, The Coat dramatized the choices facing a woman whose husband, convicted of anti-apartheid political activity, left her only a coat and instructions to use it.

Clive Barnes of The New York Times panned People Are Living There (1969) in 1971, arguing: "There are splinters of realities here, and pregnancies of feeling, hut [sic] nothing of significance emerges. In Mr. Fugard's earlier plays he seemed to be dealing with life at a proper level of humanity. Here—if real people are living there—they remain oddly quiet about it...The first act rambles disconsolately, like a lonely type writer looking for a subject and the second act produces with pride a birthday party of Chaplinesque bathos but less than Chaplinesque invention and spirit..[The characters] harangue one another in an awkward dislocation between a formal speech and an interior monologue."{{Cite news|last=Barnes|first=Clive|date=19 November 1971|title=Theater: People Are Living There'|newspaper=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/11/19/archives/theater-people-are-living-there-athol-fugards-drama-opens-at-forum.html|access-date=10 May 2020|issn=0362-4331}} Mark Blankenship of Variety negatively reviewed a 2005 revival of the same work, writing that it "lacks the emotional intensity and theatrical imagination that mark such Fugard favorites" as "Master Harold"...and the Boys. Blankenship also stated, however, that the performance he attended featuring "only haphazard sketches of plot and character" was perhaps the result of Fugard allowing director Suzanne Shepard to revise the play without showing him the changes.{{Cite web|title=People Are Living There|url=https://variety.com/2005/legit/reviews/people-are-living-there-1200525087/|last=Blankenship|first=Mark|date=17 June 2005|website=Variety|access-date=10 May 2020}}

Several of Fugard's early works were performed at the Space Theatre in Cape Town, founded in 1972.{{cite news |last1=Johns |first1=Lindsay |title=How Athol Fugard's The Island exposed the true horrors of apartheid |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/athol-fugard-the-island-apartheid/ |access-date=9 March 2025 |work=The Daily Telegraph |date=9 March 2025}} The theater mounted almost 300 productions, starting with the premier of Athol Fugard's Statements After an Arrest under the Immorality Act. It hosted the first productions of the Kani/Ntshona/Fugard collaborations The Island and Sizwe Bansi is Dead.{{cite journal|url=http://www.enotes.com/sizwe-banzi/27519|title=Sizwe Banzi Is Dead: Introduction|editor=Marie Rose Napierkowski|journal=Drama for Students|volume=(January 2006)|location=Detroit|series=14|publisher=Gale, eNotes.com|access-date=9 March 2025}} (Free excerpt; registration required for full access.)

The Serpent Players conceptualised and co-authored many plays that it performed for a variety of audiences in many theatres around the world. The following are some of its notable and most popular plays:

• Its first production was Niccolò Machiavelli's La Mandragola, directed by Fugard as The Cure and set in the township. Other productions include Georg Buchner's Woyzeck, Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle and Sophocles' Antigone. When the group had turned to improvisation, they came up with classic works such as Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and The Island, emerging as inner experiences of the actors who are also the co-authors of the plays.

• In The Coat, Kruger observes, "The participants were engaged not only in representing social relationships on stage but also on enacting and revising their own dealings with each other and with institutions of apartheid oppression from the law courts downward", and "this engagement testified to the real power of Brecht's apparently utopian plan to abolish the separation of player and audience and to make of each player a 'statesman' or social actor...Work on The Coat led indirectly to the Serpent Players' most famous and most Brechtian productions: Sizwe Banzi Is Dead (1972) and The Island (1973)."

Fugard developed these two plays for the Serpent Players in workshops, working with John Kani and Winston Ntshona, publishing them in 1974 with his own play Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act (1972). The authorities considered the title of The Island, which alludes to Robben Island, the prison where Nelson Mandela was being held, too controversial, so Fugard and the Serpent Players used the alternative title The Hodoshe Span (Hodoshe meaning "carrion fly" in Xhosa).{{cite book |chapter=Antigone on the African stage: "Wherever the call for freedom is heard!" |last1=Van Weyenberg |first1=Astrid |editor1-last=Aydemir |editor1-first=Murat |title=Migratory Settings |date=2008 |publisher=Brill |location=Leiden |isbn=9789042024250 |pages=119–137 |url=https://dare.uva.nl/search?identifier=05c668ce-8204-4c16-a6c5-e24510d2a06f |access-date=9 March 2025 |quote=. As precautions against government intervention, the performance lacked a script and was presented under an alternative title, Die Hodoshe Span (‘The Hodoshe work- team’), chosen because the intended “The Island” would have referred to Robben Island too explicitly}}

• These plays "espoused a Brechtian attention to the demonstration of gest and social situations and encouraged audiences to analyze rather than merely applaud the action"; for example, Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, which infused a Brechtian critique and vaudevillian irony-–especially in Kani's virtuoso improvisation-–even provoked an African audience's critical interruption and interrogation of the action.

• While dramatising frustrations in the lives of his audience members, the plays simultaneously drew them into the action and attempted to have them analyse the situations of the characters in Brechtian fashion, according to Kruger.

• Blood Knot was filmed by the BBC in 1967, with Fugard's collaboration, starring the Jamaican actor Charles Hyatt as Zachariah and Fugard himself as Morris, as in the original 1961 première in Johannesburg.{{cite book|first=Athol|last= Fugard|title=Notebooks 1960–1977|publisher=Craighall: A. D. Donker, 1983|isbn=0-86852-011-X|quote=Back in S'Kop after five weeks in London for BBC TV production of The Blood Knot. Myself as Morrie, with Charles Hyatt as Zach. Robin Midgley directing. Midgley reduced the play to 90 minutes...Midgley did manage to dig up things that had been missed in all the other productions. Most exciting was his treatment of the letter writing scene – 'Address her' – which he turned into an essay in literacy...Zach sweating as the words clot in his mouth...|year=1983}} Less pleased than Fugard, the South African government of B. J. Vorster confiscated Fugard's passport.Walder, Dennis, [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0403/is_n4_v39/ai_16087646/pg_7 "Crossing Boundaries: The Genesis of the Township Plays"], Special issue on Athol Fugard, Twentieth Century Literature (Winter 1993); rpt. findarticles.com. Retrieved 4 October 2008.

Fugard's play A Lesson from Aloes (1978) was described as one of his major works by Alvin Klein of The New York Times,{{Cite news|last=Klein|first=Alvin|date=13 February 1994|title=THEATER; 'Hello and Goodbye,' Early Fugard Play|newspaper=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/13/nyregion/theater-hello-and-goodbye-early-fugard-play.html|access-date=10 May 2020|issn=0362-4331}} though others have written more lukewarm reviews.

File:Fugard Theatre, front relief, Cape Town.JPG in District Six, Cape Town]]

"Master Harold"...and the Boys, written in 1982, incorporates "strong autobiographical matter"; nonetheless "it is fiction, not memoir", as Cousins: A Memoir and some of Fugard's other works are subtitled.{{cite book|first=Albert|last= Wertheim|title=The Dramatic Art of Athol Fugard: From South Africa to the World|publisher=Bloomington: Indiana University Press|isbn=978-0-253-33823-5|pages=[https://archive.org/details/dramaticartofath0000wert/page/221 225]|year=2000}} (Google Books limited preview.) The play deals with the relationship between a 17-year-old white South African and two African men who work for the white youth's family. Its world premiere was performed by Danny Glover, Željko Ivanek and Zakes Mokae, at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, in March 1982.{{Cite news |date=21 February 1982 |title=Yale to Stage Premiere of Fugard Play |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/02/21/theater/yale-to-stage-premiere-of-fugard-play.html |access-date=24 May 2022 |issn=0362-4331}}{{Cite news |last=Rich |first=Frank |date=17 March 1982 |title=THEATER: WORLD PREMIERE OF FUGARD' NEW PLAY |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/17/theater/theater-world-premiere-of-fugard-new-play.html |access-date=24 May 2022 |issn=0362-4331}}

The Road to Mecca was presented at the Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut, in May 1984. Directed by Fugard, the cast starred Carmen Mathews, Marianne Owen, and Tom Aldredge. Along with Master Harold, it proved to be one of Fugard's most acclaimed works.{{cite web|title=Fugard's 'A Lesson From Aloes' Ends Hartford Stage's 2017-18 Season|url=https://www.courant.com/ctnow/arts-theater/hc-ctnow-lesson-from-aloes-hartford-stage-20180507-story.html|last=Arnott|first=Christopher|date=8 May 2018|website=courant.com|access-date=11 May 2020}}Rich, Frank. [https://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/15/theater/stage-to-mecca-by-athol-fugard.html?pagewanted= "Stage: 'To Mecca,' By Athol Fugard"] The New York Times, 15 May 1984. It is the story of an elderly recluse in a small South African town who has spent 15 years on an obsessive artistic project.{{cite news |last=Rich |first=Frank |date=3 April 1987 |title=STAGE: FUGARD'S 'PLACE WITH THE PIGS' |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/03/theater/stage-fugard-s-place-with-the-pigs.html |access-date=24 May 2022 |issn=0362-4331}}

Fugard appeared in his A Place With the Pigs at the Yale Rep in New Haven in 1987. Inspired by the true story of World War II Soviet deserter, Fugard plays a paranoid who spent four decades hiding with his pigs. As with The Road to Mecca, Fugard's critics readily appreciated the metaphor for a life of internal exile.{{Cite news |last=Rich |first=Frank |date=15 May 1984 |title=STAGE: 'TO MECCA,' BY ATHOL FUGARD (Published 1984) |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/15/theater/stage-to-mecca-by-athol-fugard.html?pagewanted= |access-date=24 May 2022}} He himself suggested that it was a reflection on his long battle with alcoholism. From the early 1980s Fugard was a teetotaler.{{cite news |last=Fugard |first=Athol |date=31 October 2010 |title=Once upon a life: Athol Fugard |url=https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/oct/31/once-upon-a-life-athol-fugard |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101101222258/http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/oct/31/once-upon-a-life-athol-fugard |archive-date=1 November 2010 |access-date=31 October 2010 |newspaper=The Guardian |location=London}}

The first play that Fugard wrote after the end of apartheid, Valley Song, premiered in Johannesburg, in August 1995, with Fugard in the role of both a white, and of a coloured, farmer. While they dispute property titles, both share a reverence for the land and fear change.{{Cite book |url=http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-valleysong/ |title=Valley Song Summary }} In October 1995, Fugard took the play to the United States with a production by the Manhattan Theatre Club at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey.

In January 2009, Fugard returned to New Haven for the premiere of Coming Home. Veronika, the granddaughter of Buk, the coloured farmer in Valley Song, leaves the Karoo to pursue a singing career in Cape Town but then returns, after his death, to create a new life on the land for her young son.{{Cite web |last=Gans |first=Andrew |date=11 August 2008 |title=Fugard's Coming Home Will Premiere at Long Wharf Theatre |url=https://playbill.com/article/fugards-coming-home-will-premiere-at-long-wharf-theatre-com-152377 |website=Playbill}}

The Fugard Theatre, in the District Six area of Cape Town opened with performances by the Isango Portobello theatre company in February 2010 and a new play written and directed by Athol Fugard, The Train Driver, played at the theatre in March 2010.{{cite news |last=Dugger |first=Celia W. |date=13 March 2010 |title=His Next Act: Driving Out Apartheid's Ghost |newspaper=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/theater/13fugard.html |url-status=live |access-date=25 April 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100324034851/http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/theater/13fugard.html |archive-date=24 March 2010}}

In April 2014, he returned to the stage in the world premiere of his The Shadow of a Hummingbird at the Long Wharf Theatre, New Haven. This short play was performed with an "introductory scene" compiled by Paula Fourie from Fugard's journal writings. With "the playwright digging through these diaries on a set which resembles an old, busy writer's workspace", the scene blends into the main play, which begins when Boba, the grandson of the story-telling grandfather character Oupa (played by Fugard) comes to visit.{{Cite web |title=Fugard's Hummingbird Flies |url=https://www.newhavenindependent.org/article/fugards_hummingbird_flies |access-date=24 May 2022 |website=New Haven Independent }}

Fugard's plays are produced internationally and have won multiple awards, and several have been made into films (see Filmography below). Fugard himself performed in the first of these, as Boesman alongside Yvonne Bryceland as Lena, in Boesman and Lena directed by Ross Devenish in 1973.{{Cite web |title=Boesman and Lena (1973) |url=https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6a5f083a |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210804000440/https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6a5f083a |url-status=dead |archive-date=4 August 2021 |access-date=24 May 2022 |website=BFI }}

His film debut as a director occurred in 1992, when he co-directed the adaptation of his play The Road to Mecca with Peter Goldsmid, who also wrote the screenplay.{{cite web |title=The Road to Mecca |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105266/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_road%2520to%2520mecca |website=IMDB |access-date=9 March 2025}} The film adaptation of his novel Tsotsi, written and directed by Gavin Hood, won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006.{{cite news |last1=Van Eyssen |first1=Benita |title=Amandla!: Tsotsi wins Oscar |url=https://mg.co.za/article/2006-03-06-amandla-tsotsi-wins-oscar/ |access-date=9 March 2025 |publisher=The Mail & Guardian |date=6 March 2006}}

Outside of his own work, Fugard had a number of cameo film roles, most notably as General Smuts in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982), and as Doctor Sundesval in Roland Joffé's The Killing Fields (1984). Spalding Gray, who befriended Fugard on the set of The Killing Fields, conjured the writer as a sage figure in his theatrical monologue and subsequent film Swimming to Cambodia (1987)''.{{cite web|url=https://nation.cymru/feature/swimming-with-spalding-seeking-the-perfect-moment/|publisher=Nation.Cymru|title=Swimming with Spalding – seeking the perfect moment|date=August 21, 2022|author=Jones, Sarah Morgan}}

In 2012, Fugard was the subject of a major documentary, Falls the Shadow, directed by Tony Palmer and produced by Eric Abraham and David Elstein.{{cite web |last=Wolf |first=Matt |date=8 June 2012 |title=Athol Fugard - Falls the Shadow, Sky Arts 1 |url=https://theartsdesk.com/tv/athol-fugard-falls-shadow-sky-arts-1 |access-date=11 March 2025 |website=theartsdesk.com |language=en}}

In the 1990s, Fugard lived in San Diego, California,{{cite news|first=Athol |last=Fugard|author2=Serena Davies|name-list-style=amp|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/08/04/btweek104.xml|title=My Week: Athol Fugard|work=Telegraph.co.uk|date=8 April 2007|access-date=29 September 2008|location=London}}{{Dead link|date=August 2021 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} where he taught as an adjunct professor of playwriting, acting, and directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).{{cite news|url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/athol_fugard/index.html|first=Marianne |last=McDonald |title=Introd. of Athol Fugard|work=Times Topics, The New York Times|format=YouTube Video clip|date=April 2003|access-date=1 October 2008}} [Times Topics menu includes link to UCSD YouTube clip of Athol Fugard's lecture, "A Catholic Antigone: an episode in the life of Hildegard of Bingen", Eugene M. Burke C.S.P. Lectureship on Religion and Society, University of California, San Diego (UCSD).] For the academic year 2000–2001, he taught at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, as the IU Class of 1963 Wells Scholar Professor.{{cite web|url=http://www.homepages.indiana.edu/092900/text/conversations.html |first=Athol |last=Fugard |author2=Bruce Burgun |title=Conversation on line with South African Dramatist Athol Fugard|publisher=Indiana University at Bloomington|date=29 September 2000|access-date=29 September 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080911095257/http://homepages.indiana.edu/092900/text/conversations.html|archive-date=11 September 2008}} (RealAudio clip of interview.)

Although increasingly disillusioned with the course of post-Apartheid politics – he regarded it as a tragedy that Nelson Mandela had not taken a second term as President to "entrench his vision" – {{cite web |last=Smith |first=David |date=10 March 2025 |title=FROM THE ARCHIVES {{!}} Athol Fugard: All is not, and never will be, lost |url=https://mg.co.za/article/2025-03-10-00-athol-fugard-all-is-not-and-never-will-be-lost/ |access-date=10 March 2025 |website=The Mail & Guardian |language=en-ZA}} in 2012 Fugard returned to South Africa.{{cite web |url=https://www.courant.com/2014/03/23/athol-fugard-gets-personal-in-shadow-of-the-hummingbird-at-long-wharf/ |title=Athol Fugard Gets Personal In 'Shadow of the Hummingbird' At Long Wharf |website=Hartford Courant |date=23 March 2014 |access-date=24 October 2014}}{{cite web |url=http://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/athol-fugard-wins-prestigious-award-1.1720958#.VEoNMPmUeSp |title=Athol Fugard wins prestigious award |work=Cape Times |date=17 July 2014 |access-date=24 October 2014 |last=Samodien |first=Leila}}

In 2015, after almost 60 years of marriage, Athol and Sheila Fugard (who had become an established novelist and poet) divorced. The following year, Fugard married Paula Fourie, a younger South African writer and academic.{{cite news |date=13 May 2016 |title=Congratulations Athol Fugard & Paula Fourie |work=Creative Feel |url=http://creativefeel.co.za/2016/05/congratulations-athol-fugard-paula-fourie/ |access-date=16 November 2017}} The couple lived in the Cape Winelands region of South Africa with their two children, daughter Halle and son Lanigan.{{cite web |last=Maako |title=Renowned playwright Athol Fugard dies, aged 92 |url=https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2025-03-09-renowned-playwright-athol-fugard-dies-aged-92/ |access-date=9 March 2025 |website=TimesLive |language=en-US}}{{cite web |first=Elna |last=van der Merwe |title=Aangaande Athol, Paula en Babyboy Kleintjies |url=https://www.vryeweekblad.com/lewenstyl-en-kos/2022-10-07-aangaande-athol-paula-en-babyboy-kleintjies/ |date=7 October 2022|access-date=9 February 2023 |website=Vrye Weekblad |language=af-ZA}}{{Cite web |last=Fourie |first=Paula |date=6 October 2022 |title='n Bedrywige Woordfees vir Paula Fourie met Taliep, Babyboy Kleintjies en Athol |url=https://www.litnet.co.za/n-bedrywige-woordfees-vir-paula-fourie-met-taliep-babyboy-kleintjies-en-athol/ |access-date=9 February 2023 |website=LitNet}}

Fugard died at his home in Stellenbosch, Western Cape, on 8 March 2025, at the age of 92.{{Cite magazine |last=Maako |first=Keitumetse |title=Internationally acclaimed playwright Athol Fugard dies at 92 |url=https://www.news24.com/life/arts-and-entertainment/celebrities/internationally-acclaimed-playwright-athol-fugard-dies-at-92-20250309 |access-date=9 March 2025 |magazine=Life |language=en-US}} In 2006, Fugard had reserved a grave plot for himself in Nieu-Bethesda, a village in the Karoo where he had a home and where the preserved Owl House and statuary gardens of the reclusive artist Helen Martins inspired his play The Road to Mecca. He had also expressed the wish to have his gravestone inscribed with the remark of a black child he had passed on an uphill run in the Karoo: "Hou so aan, Oubaas – jy kom eerste!" ("Keep going, boss – you’re coming first!").{{Cite web |title=Statement on the passing of Dr Athol Fugard on 8 March 2025 - News |url=https://news.mandela.ac.za/News/Statement-on-the-passing-of-Dr-Athol-Fugard-on-8-M |access-date=10 March 2025 |website=news.mandela.ac.za}}

In addition to his children with Paula Fourie, Fugard is survived by a daughter from his first marriage, the writer Lisa Fugard. Born in 1961,{{Cite web |title=Fugard, Lisa 1961– {{!}} Encyclopedia.com |url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/fugard-lisa-1961 |access-date=13 March 2025 |website=www.encyclopedia.com}} she moved to the United States in 1980 to pursue an acting career.{{Cite web |title=Lisa Fugard |url=https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Lisa-Fugard/29551122 |access-date=13 March 2025 |website=Simon & Schuster |language=en}} Her 2013 debut novel, Skinner's Drift, is the tale of a daughter's return to post-Apartheid South Africa.{{Cite book |last=Fugard |first=Lisa |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mokYhfgokR8C |title=Skinner's Drift |date=7 March 2013 |publisher=Penguin UK |isbn=978-0-670-92357-1 |language=en}}

In chronological order of first production and/or publication:{{cite web |title=Plays by Athol Fugard |url=https://www.thefugard.com/athol-fugard/ |website=The Fugard Theatre |access-date=9 March 2025}}Fisher observes in the Fugard "Biography" section of Athol Fugard: Statements that South African writer and critic Gray, Stephen classifies many of Fugard's dramatic works according to chronological periods of composition and similarities of style: "Apprenticeship" ([1956–]1957); "Social Realism" (1958–1961); "Chamber Theatre" (1961–1970); "Improvised Theatre" (1966–1973); and "Poetic Symbolism" (1975[–1990]).{{cite book|editor=Stephen Gray|editor-link=Stephen Gray (writer)|title=File on Fugard|publisher=London: Methuen Drama|isbn=978-0-413-64580-7|year=1991}}{{cite book|first=Athol|last= Fugard|editor= Stephen Gray|title=My Children! My Africa! and Selected Shorter Plays|publisher=Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press|isbn=1-86814-117-9|year=1990}}

{{Div col}}

• Klaas and the Devil (1956)
• The Cell (1957)
• No-Good Friday (1958)
• Non-Gogo (1959)
• The Blood Knot (1961); later revised and entitled Blood Knot (1987)
• Hello and Goodbye (1965)
• The Coat (1966)
• People Are Living There (1968)
• The Last Bus (1969)
• Boesman and Lena (1969)
• Friday's Bread on Monday (1970)
• Sizwe Banzi Is Dead (1972) (developed with John Kani, and Winston Ntshona in workshops)
• The Island (1972) (developed with John Kani, and Winston Ntshona in workshops)
• Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act (1972)
• Dimetos (1975)
• Orestes (1978)
• A Lesson from Aloes (1978)
• The Drummer (1980)
• "Master Harold"...and the Boys (1982)
• The Road to Mecca (1984)
• A Place with the Pigs: a personal parable (1987)
• My Children! My Africa! (1989)
• My Life (1992)
• Playland (1993)
• Valley Song (1996)
• The Captain's Tiger: a memoir for the stage (1997)
• Sorrows and Rejoicings (2001)
• Exits and Entrances (2004)
• Booitjie and the Oubaas (2006)
• Victory (2007)
• Coming Home (2009)
• Have You Seen Us (2009)
• The Train Driver (2010)
• The Shadow of the Hummingbird (2014)
• The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek (2016)
• Concerning the Life of Babyboy Kleintjies (2022) (co-written with Paula Fourie){{Cite web |last=Petrick |first=Nadine |date=11 October 2022 |title=Toyota US Woordfees 2022 Instagram-resensie: Concerning the life of Babyboy Kleintjies - LitNet |url=https://www.litnet.co.za/toyota-us-woordfees-2022-instagram-resensie-concerning-the-life-of-babyboy-kleintjies/ |access-date=8 May 2024 |website=LitNet – Die boekehuis met baie wonings}}

{{Div col end}}

• Statements: [Three Plays]. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press (OUP), 1974. {{ISBN|0-19-211385-2}} (10). {{ISBN|978-0-19-211385-6}} (13). {{ISBN|0-19-281170-3}} (10). {{ISBN|978-0-19-281170-7}} (13). (Co-authored with John Kani and Winston Ntshona; see below.)
• Three Port Elizabeth Plays: Blood Knot; Hello and Goodbye; and Boesman and Lena. Oxford and New York, 1974. {{ISBN|0-19-211366-6}}.
• Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island. New York: Viking Press, 1976. {{ISBN|0-670-64784-5}}
• Dimetos and Two Early Plays. Oxford and New York: OUP, 1977. {{ISBN|0-19-211390-9}}.
• Boesman and Lena and Other Plays. Oxford and New York: OUP, 1980. {{ISBN|0-19-570197-6}}.
• Selected Plays of Fugard: Notes. Ed. Dennis Walder. London: Longman, 1980. Beirut: York Press, 1980. {{ISBN|0-582-78129-9}}.
• Tsotsi: a novel. New York: Random House, 1980. {{ISBN|978-0-394-51384-3}}.
• A Lesson from Aloes: A Play. Oxford and New York: OUP, 1981.
• Marigolds in August. A.D. Donker, 1982. {{ISBN|0-86852-008-X}}.
• Boesman and Lena. Oxford and New York: OUP, 1983. {{ISBN|0-19-570331-6}}.
• People Are Living There. Oxford and New York: OUP, 1983. {{ISBN|0-19-570332-4}}.
• "Master Harold"...and the Boys. New York and London: Penguin, 1984. {{ISBN|0-14-048187-7}}.
• Notebooks 1960–1977. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984. {{ISBN|0-394-53755-6}}
• The Road to Mecca: A Play in Two Acts. London: Faber and Faber, 1985. {{ISBN|0-571-13691-5}}. [Suggested by the life and work of Helen Martins of New Bethesda, Eastern Cape, South Africa.]
• Selected Plays. Oxford and New York: OUP, 1987. {{ISBN|0-19-281929-1}}. [Includes: "Master Harold"...and the Boys; Blood Knot (new version); Hello and Goodbye; Boesman and Lena.]
• A Place with the Pigs: a personal parable. London: Faber and Faber, 1988. {{ISBN|0-571-15114-0}}.
• My Children! My Africa! and Selected Shorter Plays. Ed. and introd. Stephen Gray. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press, 1990. {{ISBN|1-86814-117-9}}.
• Blood Knot and Other Plays. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1991. {{ISBN|1-55936-019-4}}.
• Playland and Other Worlds. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press, 1992. {{ISBN|1-86814-219-1}}.
• The Township Plays. Ed. and introd. Dennis Walder. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1993. {{ISBN|0-19-282925-4}} (10). {{ISBN|978-0-19-282925-2}} (13). [Includes: No-good Friday, Nongogo, The Coat, Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, and The Island.]
• Cousins: A Memoir, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand UP, 1994. {{ISBN|1-86814-278-7}}.
• Hello and Goodbye. Oxford and New York: OUP, 1994. {{ISBN|0-19-571099-1}}.
• Valley Song. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. {{ISBN|0-571-17908-8}}.
• The Captain's Tiger: A Memoir for the Stage. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1997. {{ISBN|1-86814-324-4}}.
• Athol Fugard: Plays. London: Faber and Faber, 1998. {{ISBN|0-571-19093-6}}.
• Interior Plays. Oxford and New York: OUP, 2000. {{ISBN|0-19-288035-7}}.
• Port Elizabeth Plays. Oxford and New York: OUP, 2000. {{ISBN|0-19-282529-1}}.
• Sorrows and Rejoicings. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2002. {{ISBN|1-55936-208-1}}.
• Exits and Entrances. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2004. {{ISBN|0-8222-2041-5}}.

;Co-authored with John Kani and Winston Ntshona

• Statements: [Three Plays]. 1974. By Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona. Rev. ed. Oxford and New York: OUP, 1978. {{ISBN|0-19-281170-3}} (10). {{ISBN|978-0-19-281170-7}} (13). ["Two workshop productions devised by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona, and a new play"; includes: Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island, and Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act.]

;Co-authored with Ross Devenish

• The Guest: an episode in the life of Eugene Marais. By Athol Fugard and Ross Devenish. Craighall: A. D. Donker, 1977. {{ISBN|0-949937-36-3}}. (Die besoeker: 'n episode in die lewe van Eugene Marais. Trans. into Afrikaans by Wilma Stockenstrom. Craighall: A. D. Donker, 1977. {{ISBN|0-949937-43-6}}.)

;Films adapted from Fugard's plays and novel

• Boesman and Lena (1974), dir. Ross Devenish
• The Guest: An Episode in the Life of Eugene Marais (1977){{cite journal |last1=Keuris |first1=Marisa |title=Athol Fugard's Exits and Entrances : The Playwright, the Actor and the Poet |journal=Journal of Literary Studies |date=June 2008 |volume=24 |issue=2 |pages=71–84 |doi=10.1080/02564710701841452 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240541284}}
• Marigolds in August (1980), dir. Ross Devenish
• "Master Harold"...and the Boys (1984), TV movie, dir. Michael Lindsay-Hogg, first broadcast on Showtime{{cite news |last1=Richards |first1=David |title=The Breaking of Bonds in Fugard's 'Master Harold' |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1984/11/12/the-breaking-of-bonds-in-fugards-master-harold/3c4199d5-e91d-4fd3-8b40-efe7b4abf655/ |access-date=9 March 2025 |newspaper=Washington Post |date=11 November 1984}}
• The Road to Mecca (1991), co-dir. by Fugard and Peter Goldsmid (screen adapt.){{cite magazine|last=Haun|first=Harry|title=Broadway's The Road to Mecca Is Paved With Extraordinary Artists — On Stage and Off|date=4 January 2012|magazine=Playbill|url=http://www.playbill.com/article/broadways-the-road-to-mecca-is-paved-with-extroardinary-artists-on-stage-and-off-com-186080|accessdate=10 January 2018}}
• Boesman and Lena (2000), dir. John Berry{{cite web |title=Boesman and Lena: Screening on Film |url=https://harvardfilmarchive.org/calendar/boseman-and-lena-2001-03 |website=Harvard Film Archive |date=16 March 2001 |access-date=9 March 2025}}
• Tsotsi (2005), screen adapt. and dir. Gavin Hood; 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
• "Master Harold"...and the Boys (2010), dir. Lonny Price{{cite news |last1=Erickson |first1=Steve |title=The Upsetter and Master Harold ... and the Boys |url=https://www.nashvillescene.com/arts_culture/film_tv/i-the-upsetter-i-and-i-master-harold-and-the-boys-i/article_39bcb002-4216-532e-86b3-b5d68ae853ef.html |access-date=9 March 2025 |work=Nashville Scene |date=23 June 2011}}

;Film roles

• Boesman and Lena (1974) as Boesman
• The Guest: An Episode in the Life of Eugene Marais (1977) as Eugène Marais
• Meetings with Remarkable Men (1979) as Professor Skridlov
• Marigolds in August (1980) as Paulus Olifant
• Gandhi (1982) as General Jan Smuts{{cite news |last1=Bernstein |first1=Fred |title=Athol Fugard, trenchant South African playwright, dies at 92 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2025/03/09/athol-fugard-playwright-dead/ |access-date=9 March 2025 |newspaper=Washington Post |date=9 March 2025}}
• The Killing Fields (1984) as Doctor Sundesval
• The Road to Mecca (1991) as Reverend Marius Byleveld

;TheatreA list of Fugard's Broadway theatre award nominations may be found at the IBDB. {{cite web|url=http://www.ibdb.com/awardperson.asp?id=4353 |title=Athol Fugard: Awards |publisher=Internet Broadway Database |access-date=1 October 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070304205126/http://www.ibdb.com/awardperson.asp?id=4353 |archive-date=4 March 2007}}

• Obie Award
• 1971 – Best Foreign Play – Boesman and Lena (winner){{cite web|url=http://www.lortel.org/LLA_archive/index.cfm?search_by=people&keyword=name&first=Athol&last=Fugard&middle=|title=Athol Fugard: Award Nominations; Award(s) Won|publisher=The Internet Off-Broadway Database|access-date=2 October 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090315033734/http://www.lortel.org/LLA_archive/index.cfm?search_by=people&keyword=name&first=Athol&last=Fugard&middle=|archive-date=15 March 2009}}
• Tony Award
• 1975 – Best Play – Sizwe Banzi Is Dead / The Island – Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona (nomination)
• 1981 - Best Play – A Lesson from Aloes (nomination)
• 1982 - Best Play – "Master Harold"...and the Boys (nomination)
• 1986 - Best Play – Blood Knot (nomination)
• 2011 – Special Tony Award Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre (winner){{cite news |last1=Gans |first1=Andrew |title=Athol Fugard, Philip J. Smith, Eve Ensler Win Special Tony Awards |url=https://playbill.com/article/athol-fugard-philip-j-smith-eve-ensler-win-special-tony-awards-com-177969 |access-date=9 March 2025 |work=Playbill |date=6 April 2011}}
• New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards
• 1981 – Best Play – A Lesson From Aloes (winner){{cite web |title=Past Awards |url=https://www.dramacritics.org/dc_pastawards.html#1983 |website=New York Drama Critics' Circle |access-date=9 March 2025}}
• 1982 – Best Play – "Master Harold"...and the Boys (runner-up)
• 1988 – Best Foreign Play – The Road to Mecca (winner)
• Evening Standard Award
• 1983 – Best Play – "Master Harold"...and the Boys (winner){{cite news |author1=Staff |title='Master Harold... and the Boys' a story of human relationships |url=https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/entertainment/2019/07/23/master-harold-and-boys-story-human-relationships/1796237001/#:~:text=Although%20the%20play%20was%20banned,Evening%20Standard%20Award%20in%201984. |access-date=9 March 2025 |work=Montgomery Advisor |date=23 July 2019}}
• Drama Desk Awards
• 1982 – "Master Harold"...and the Boys (winner)
• Lucille Lortel Awards
• 1992 – Outstanding Revival – Boesman and Lena (winner)
• 1996 – Outstanding Body of Work (winner){{cite web|url=http://www.lortel.org/LLF_awards/index.cfm?page=previous1986-2000 |title=Lucille Lortel Awards Archive: 1986–2000 |publisher=Lortel Archives |access-date=2 October 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090321225119/http://www.lortel.org/LLF_awards/index.cfm?page=previous1986-2000 |archive-date=21 March 2009}}
• The Audie Awards (Audio Publishers Association)
• 1999 – Theatrical Productions – The Road to Mecca (winner){{cite web|url=http://www.writerswrite.com/books/awards/audie.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19990502194144/http://www.writerswrite.com/books/awards/audie.htm |archive-date=2 May 1999 |title=The Audie Awards: 1999 |format=World Wide Web |publisher=Writers Write, Inc. |access-date=2 October 2008 }}
• Outer Critics Circle Award
• 2007 – Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play – Exits and Entrances (nomination)

;Honorary awards

• Writers Guild of America, East Award
• 1986 – Evelyn F. Burkey Memorial Award – (along with Lloyd Richards){{cite web |author=Anon. |date=2013 |title=Honorary Awards: Past Winners |website=WGAEast.org |publisher=Writers Guild of America, East |location=New York |url=http://www.wgaeast.org/index.php?id=262 |url-status=dead |access-date=5 September 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130616190343/http://www.wgaeast.org/index.php?id=262 |archive-date=16 June 2013}}
• National Orders Award (South Africa)
• 2005 – The Order of Ikhamanga in Silver – "for his excellent contribution and achievements in the theatre"
• American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award{{cite web|title= Athol Fugard Biography and Interview |website=www.achievement.org|publisher=American Academy of Achievement|url=https://www.achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/#interview}}
• 2014 – Golden Plate Award
• Praemium Imperiale, 2014{{cite web | url=http://stias.ac.za/news/2014/07/stias-fellow-athol-fugard-receives-prestigious-2014-praemium-imperiale-arts-prize/ | title=STIAS Fellow Athol Fugard receives prestigious 2014 prize | date=16 July 2014 | publisher=Stellenbosch University | access-date=17 July 2014}}

;Honorary degrees

• Yale University, 1983{{cite web|url=http://www.yale.edu/oir/book_numbers_updated/A6%20_Honorary_Degree_Honorands.pdf|title=Yale University: Honorary Degree Honorands: 1977–2000|publisher=Yale University|access-date=4 October 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081010202749/http://www.yale.edu/oir/book_numbers_updated/A6%20_Honorary_Degree_Honorands.pdf|archive-date=10 October 2008}}
• Wittenberg University, 1992{{cite web|url=https://www.wittenberg.edu/cabinet/honorary.html |title=Honorary Degree Recipients: 1948–2001 |publisher=Wittenberg University |access-date=4 October 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070814202356/https://www.wittenberg.edu/cabinet/honorary.html |archive-date=14 August 2007 }}
• University of the Witwatersrand, 1993{{cite web|url=http://web.wits.ac.za/Alumni/Awards/HonoraryDegs.htm |title=Honorary Graduates: 1920s to 2000s |format=World Wide Web |publisher=University of the Witwatersrand |access-date=4 October 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080803020357/http://web.wits.ac.za/Alumni/Awards/HonoraryDegs.htm |archive-date=3 August 2008 |url-status=live}}
• Brown University, 1995{{cite press release|url=http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/Databases/Release_Index_Search.php?Date_Day=01&Date_Month=07&Date_Year=1993&author=any&maxRecords=50&subject=honorary|title=News release 94–185|format=World Wide Web|publisher=Brown University News Bureau (Sweeney)|date=24 May 1995|access-date=4 October 2008}}
• Princeton University, 1998{{cite web|url=http://www.princeton.edu/pr/facts/honorary/|title=Honorary Degrees Awarded by Princeton University: 1940s to 2000s|format=World Wide Web|publisher=Princeton University|access-date=4 October 2008| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080921164328/http://www.princeton.edu/pr/facts/honorary/| archive-date= 21 September 2008 | url-status= live}}
• University of Stellenbosch, 2006{{cite web|url=https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/stellenbosch-honours-athol-fugard-274859 |title=Stellenbosch honours Athol Fugard |first=Zeninjor |last=Enwemeka|date=21 April 2006|access-date=23 September 2017 |work=IOL }}

{{portal|Novels}}

• South Africa under apartheid

{{Reflist|30em}}

• [http://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/Downloads/Store/AmajubaWP.pdf The Amajuba Resource Pack] ({{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110614123544/http://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/Downloads/Store/AmajubaWP.pdf |date=14 June 2011 }}). The Oxford Playhouse and Farber Foundry: In Association with Mmabana Arts Foundation. Oxford Playhouse, October 2004. Retrieved 1 October 2008. Downloadable PDF. ["Photographs by Robert Day; Written by Rachel G. Briscoe; Edited by Rupert Rowbotham; Overseen by Yael Farber." 18 pages.]
• Athol Fugard. Special issue of Twentieth Century Literature 39.4 (Winter 1993). [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0403/is_n4_v39 Index]. Findarticles.com. . Retrieved 4 October 2008. [Includes: Athol Fugard, "Some Problems of a Playwright from South Africa" (Transcript. 11 pages).]
• Blumberg, Marcia Shirley, and Dennis Walder, eds. South African Theatre As/and Intervention. Amsterdam and Atlanta, Georgia: Editions Rodopi B.V., 1999. {{ISBN|90-420-0537-8}} (10). {{ISBN|978-90-420-0537-2}} (13).
• Fugard, Athol. [https://books.google.com/books?id=O7bo9B_aAZUC A Lesson from Aloes]. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1989. {{ISBN|1-55936-001-1}} (10). {{ISBN|978-1-55936-001-2}} (13). Google Books. Retrieved 1 October 2008. (Limited preview available.)
• Fugard, Athol, and Chris Boyd. [http://chrisboyd.blogspot.com/2006/02/athol-fugard-on-tsotsi-truth-and.html "Athol Fugard on Tsotsi, Truth and Reconciliation, Camus, Pascal and 'courageous pessimism'..."], The Morning After: Performing Arts in Australia (Blog). WordPress. 29 January 2006. Retrieved 4 October 2008. ["An edited interview with South African playwright Athol Fugard (in San Diego) on the publication of his only novel Tsotsi in Australia, 29 January 2006."]
• Fugard, Athol, and Serena Davies. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/08/04/btweek104.xml "My Week: Athol Fugard"]{{dead link|date=January 2025|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}. The Daily Telegraph, 8 April 2007. Retrieved 29 September 2008. [The playwright describes his week to Serena Davies, prior to the opening of his play Victory at the Theatre Royal, Bath (telephone interview).]
• Gray, Stephen. Athol Fugard. Johannesburg and New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982. {{ISBN|0-07-450633-1}} (10). {{ISBN|978-0-07-450633-2}} (13). {{ISBN|0-07-450615-3}} (10). {{ISBN|978-0-07-450615-8}} (13).
• Gray, Stephen, ed. and introd. File on Fugard. London: Methuen Drama, 1991. {{ISBN|0-413-64580-0}} (10). {{ISBN|978-0-413-64580-7}} (13).
• Gray, Stephen. My Children! My Africa! and Selected Shorter Plays, by Athol Fugard. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1990. {{ISBN|1-86814-117-9}}.
• Kruger, Loren. [https://books.google.com/books?id=s4Qizpti1Z4C Post-Imperial Brecht Politics and Performance, East and South]. Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. {{ISBN|0-521-81708-0}} (10). {{ISBN|978-0-521-81708-0}} (13). (Google Books; limited preview available.)
• McDonald, Marianne. [https://web.archive.org/web/20080724105820/http://www-theatre.ucsd.edu/TF/fugard.html "A Gift for His Seventieth Birthday: Athol Fugard's Sorrows and Rejoicings"]. Department of Theatre and Dance. University of California, San Diego. Rpt. from TheatreForum 21 (Summer/Fall 2002). Retrieved 2 October 2008.
• McLuckie, Craig (Okanagan College). [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1651 "Athol Fugard (1932–)"]. The Literary Encyclopedia. 8 October 2003. Retrieved 29 September 2008.
• Morris, Stephen Leigh. [http://www.laweekly.com/2008-01-31/stage/falling-sky/ "Falling Sky: Athol Fugard's Victory"]. LA Weekly, 31 January 2008. Retrieved 29 September 2008. (Theatre review of the American première at The Fountain Theatre, Los Angeles.)
• Spencer, Charles. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/drama/3667295/Victory-The-fights-gone-out-of-Fugard.html "Victory: The Fight's Gone Out of Fugard"].{{dead link|date=January 2025|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}} The Daily Telegraph, 17 August 2007. Retrieved 30 September 2008. [Theatre review of Victory at the Theatre Royal, Bath.]
• Walder, Dennis. Athol Fugard. Writers and Their Work. Tavistock: Northcote House in association with the British Council, 2003. {{ISBN|0-7463-0948-1}} (10). {{ISBN|978-0-7463-0948-3}} (13).
• Wertheim, Albert. The Dramatic Art of Athol Fugard: From South Africa to the World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. {{ISBN|0-253-33823-9}} (10). {{ISBN|978-0-253-33823-5}} (13).
• Wertheim, Albert, ed. and introd. Athol Fugard: A Casebook. [Casebooks on Modern Dramatists]. Gen. Ed., Kimball King. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997. {{ISBN|0-8153-0745-4}} (10). {{ISBN|978-0-8153-0745-7}} (13). (Out of print; unavailable.) [Hardcover ed. published by Garland Publishing; the series of Casebooks on Modern Dramatists is now published by Routledge, an imprint of Taylor & Francis, and does not include this title.]

Reviews

• Fullerton, Ian (1980), review of Tsotsi, in Cencrastus No. 4. Winter 1980–81, p. 41, {{issn|0264-0856}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20080515201344/http://theatre.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/AtholFugard/ "Athol Fugard"]. Faculty profile. Department of Theatre and Dance. University of California, San Diego. (Lists Athol Fugard: Statements: An Athol Fugard site by Iain Fisher as "Personal Website"; see below.)
• {{IBDB name}}
• {{IMDb name|id=0297538|name=Athol Fugard}}
• {{discogs artist|Athol Fugard}}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20090315033734/http://www.lortel.org/LLA_archive/index.cfm?search_by=people&keyword=name&first=Athol&last=Fugard&middle= Athol Fugard] at the Internet Off-Broadway Database (IOBDb)
• [http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/athol_fugard/index.html Athol Fugard] at Times Topics in The New York Times. (Includes YouTube Video clip of Athol Fugard's Burke Lecture "A Catholic Antigone: An Episode in the Life of Hildegard of Bingen", the Eugene M. Burke C.S.P. Lectureship on Religion and Society, at the University of California, San Diego, introduced by Professor of Theatre and Classics Marianne McDonald, UCSD Department of Theatre and Dance, April 2003 [Show ID: 7118]. 1:28:57 [duration].)
• [http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=Athol+Fugard&fq=&qt=first_page Athol Fugard] at WorldCat
• [http://www.bookrags.com/biography/athol-fugard/ "Athol Fugard Biography"] – "Athol Fugard", rpt. by bookrags.com (Ambassadors Group, Inc.) from the Encyclopedia of World Biography. ("2005–2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.")
• [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/221431/Athol-Fugard "Athol Fugard (1932– )"] at Britannica Online Encyclopedia (subscription based; free trial available)
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20080916201349/http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsF/fugard-athol.html "Athol Fugard (1932– )"] – Complete Guide to Playwright and Plays at Doollee.com
• [http://www.iainfisher.com/fugard.html Athol Fugard: Statements: An Athol Fugard site by Iain Fisher]. (Listed as "Personal Website" in UCSB faculty profile; see above.)
• [https://books.google.com/books?as_auth=Athol+Fugard "Books by Athol Fugard"] at Google Books (several with limited previews available)
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20090321011617/http://www.whoswhosa.co.za/Pages/profilefull.aspx?IndID=5060 "Full Profile: Mr Athol 'Lanigan' Fugard"] in Who's Who of Southern Africa. Copyright 2007 24.com (Media24). (Includes hyperlinked "News Articles" from 2000 to 2008.)
• [https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5490232 "Interviews: South Africa's Fugards: Writing About Wrongs"]. Morning Edition. National Public Radio. NPR RealAudio. 16 June 2006. (With hyperlinked "Related NPR stories" from 2001 to 2006.)
• {{cite journal| url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2416/the-art-of-theater-no-8-athol-fugard| title=Athol Fugard, The Art of Theater No. 8| journal=Paris Review| date=Summer 1989| first=Lloyd|last= Richards | volume=Summer 1989| issue=111}}
• [http://esat.sun.ac.za/index.php/Athol_Fugard "Athol Fugard"] in the Encyclopaedia of South African Theatre and Performance
• [http://archives.nypl.org/the/22614 Nancy T. Kearns collection of Athol Fugard materials, 1983–1996], held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

{{Plays by Athol Fugard}}

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Category:1932 births

Category:2025 deaths

Category:20th-century South African male actors

Category:20th-century South African writers

Category:21st-century South African male actors

Category:21st-century South African writers

Category:Afrikaner people

Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature

Category:People from Middelburg, Eastern Cape

Category:Recipients of the Order of Ikhamanga

Category:South African anti-apartheid activists

Category:South African dramatists and playwrights

Category:South African male dramatists and playwrights

Category:South African male film actors

Category:South African male novelists

Category:South African people of Dutch descent

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Category:South African people of Irish descent

Category:Special Tony Award recipients

Category:White South African anti-apartheid activists

Category:Writers Guild of America Award winners