Fugard, Wertheim to meet on stage TuesdayIU prof’s new book examines form and content of South African dramatist’s workBy Jayne Spencer | |
 Fugard |
You’re invited.
Let’s say you’ll be the fly on the wall as matters of art, theater, politics and the resiliency of the human spirit become the focus of discussion between one of the world’s best known living dramatists and an academician whose newest book examines that d rama. South African playwright Athol Fugard will join Indiana University’s Al Wertheim on stage for a “public conversation” Tuesday (Sept. 19) at 7:30 p.m. at the University Theatre on the IU Bloomington campus. Fugard, who also has distinguished himself internationally as a director and actor, arrived in the Midwest earlier this week to serve as the IU Class of 1963 Wells Scholar Professor through Sept. 24. Wertheim is a former associate dean of Research and the University Graduate School and has taught in the IUB departments of Comparative Literature, English, and Theatre and Drama. Wertheim is the author of The Dramatic Art of Athol Fugard: From South Africa to the World, newly released this week by the IU Press. Fugard, according to Wertheim, ranks in the top six or seven English-language playwrights alive in the last decade of the 20th century, a list that includes such legends as Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter and Edward Albee. Among Fugard’s works are “Master Ha rold”...and the Boys; Boesman and Lena; The Island; A Lesson from Aloes; My Children! My Africa!; and Playland. His face may be familiar to film buffs for roles he has portrayed in Gandhi, The Killing Fields and The Road to Mecca, among others. Fugard’s activities on the Bloomington campus will include participation in class sessions with Wells Scholars and other honors undergraduates enrolled in Wertheim’s class on the Fugard plays. The playwright also will take part in master theater classes a nd an Honors College supper. What students of Fugard will learn this month, said Wertheim, “is how one of the most talented and famous playwrights of our day writes about political and social issues and influences change.” Many of Fugard’s works were written during and in opposition to South Africa’s years of apartheid. His prevailing theme addresses the strength of the human spirit. Wertheim praised the playwright, director and actor who frequently appears in his own plays, as “an author who doesn’t write in an ivory tower.” “His works reflect a sophisticated understanding of the connections between stage action and political action,” Wertheim writes, “between roles assumed in the theatre and those assumed in life. In this regard, Fugard’s intimacy with theatre, his awareness of the analogies between one’s life in theatre and one’s life as a citizen in the world, puts him in a class with Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, Chekhov, Brecht, Shakespeare and Moliere.” IU’s Lilly Library in Bloomington became the repository of the Fugard papers last summer, and an exhibit there, which runs through Oct. 14, will feature letters to Fugard from friends and fans, original scripts, journals, playbills and published editions of his plays. The Lilly, said Wertheim, has become a major player in the acquisition of South African literary papers. In addition to the Fugard collection, the Lilly houses the papers of novelist Nadine Gordimer, the Nobel Prize laureate in literature from South Afric a. South African human rights activist Helen Suzman, a vociferous opponent of apartheid while serving as a member of the South African Parliament, served as a Distinguished Citizen Fellow of the IU Institute for Advanced Study in the spring of 1992 and was t he commencement speaker at IUB that year. IU Press was publisher of a Suzman biography in 1976. Watch this site for other broadcast streaming opportunities related to Fugard’s visit: http://broadcast.iu.edu/ For more about Fugard, go to this site: http://www.indiana.edu/~thtr/SpecialProjects/Fugard/Fugard.html |
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Publication date: 15 September 2000
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