A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
South African playwright Athol Fugard has died. He wrote about life during and after apartheid in plays such as "Blood Knot" and "Master Harold... And The Boys." He was 92 years old. With more, here's Jeff Lunden.
JEFF LUNDEN, BYLINE: When apartheid ended and Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa, Athol Fugard thought his life as a playwright was over, he told NPR in 2015.
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ATHOL FUGARD: I sincerely believed that I was going to be South Africa's first literary redundancy. But South Africa caught me by surprise again and just said, no, you got to keep writing, man. There are still stories to tell.
LUNDEN: And for six decades, in close to three dozen plays, Fugard told stories about the corrosive effects of a political system which oppressed the Black majority, as well as stories of the white minority. Theater critic Matt Wolf says Fugard wrote intimate stories.
MATT WOLF: I think his broad, teeming canvas is the canvas of the imagination. He doesn't need huge numbers of people.
LUNDEN: In fact, Fugard's breakthrough play, "Blood Knot," featured only two actors onstage. They played brothers - one Black, the other of mixed race who can pass for white. This clip is from a New York revival in 2009.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As Morris) There's more to wearing a white skin than just putting on a hat. You've see white men before without hats, but they're still white men, aren't they?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As Zachariah) Yeah.
LUNDEN: Fugard was born in 1932. His father was of English descent and an alcoholic, something the playwright struggled with himself. His mother, of Afrikaans descent, was the breadwinner, running a tearoom and boarding house. He said she helped him find the empathy that guided him through the years.
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FUGARD: Society was trying to make me conform to a set of very rigid, racist ideas. And she was endowed with just a natural sense of justice and decency. And she was asking questions about the world in which the two of us found ourselves struggling. She said to me, there must be something wrong with this.
LUNDEN: Fugard's most autobiographical play, "'Master Harold'...And The Boys" takes place in a tearoom like his mother's, where the white teenage protagonist spends an afternoon with the two Black men who work there. The play was banned in South Africa, was a hit around the world and was made into a movie.
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FUGARD: "'Master Harold'...And The Boys" is a play about a breakdown of communication, about a withdrawal away from an understanding of each other into our separate, isolated little worlds.
LUNDEN: And the collision of those worlds had serious consequences during apartheid. Fugard had his passport revoked, and many Black actors he worked with ended up on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela. That notorious prison became the setting for a Tony Award-winning play, "The Island," which Fugard created with actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona, based on their experiences. Critic Matt Wolf.
WOLF: People who don't know much about him think that he's Black. And when I say, actually, he's white, they're surprised.
LUNDEN: Because Athol Fugard made empathy central to his life and his work.
For NPR News, I'm Jeff Lunden in New York.
(SOUNDBITE OF VULFPECK'S "FUGUE STATE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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