A South African pastor and a young teacher from Cape Town battle over the fate of an eccentric elderly widow. The play won the 1988 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play.

In his introduction to this collection, Stephen Gray states that `there can be no artistic grounds on which to uphold a belief that "short" implies "lesser"'; he goes on to make the point that `Fugard seems naturally to be most at ease when working in compact dense forms'. This collection brings together all the available shorter plays by Athol Fugard not accessible to readers and performers, and demonstrates through these plays the crucial stages of Fugard's development as a great man of the theatre.

The five plays collected here offer a unique insight into the role of theatre in a situation of oppression. They were produced in close collaboration with their original black amateur casts, drawing on their lives and everyday experiences in the townships. They range from the early apprentice work of the brash but vital Sophiatown plays, No-Good Friday and Nongogo, to the freer, more urgent, and profound New Brighton plays, including the most famous Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The Island, and the previously unavailable The Coat.

The power of theatrical performance is universal, but the style and concerns of theatre are specific to individual cultures. This volume in the Global Theatre Perspectives series presents a reconstructed ancient performance text, four one-act indigenous African plays and five modern dramas from various regions of Africa and the Caribbean Diaspora. Because these plays span centuries and are the work of artists from diverse cultures, readers can see elements that occur across time and space. Physicalized ritual, direct interaction with spectators, improvisation, music, drumming, and metaphorical animal characters help create the theatrical forms in multiple plays. Recurring themes include the establishment or challenging of political authority, the oppression or corruption of government, societal expectations based on gender, the complex and transformational nature of identity, and the power of dreams. Though each play is its own unique entity, reading them together allows readers to explore what theatrical elements and cultural concerns are perhaps essentially African. The Caribbean plays add further perspective to the questions of what values, theatrical and societal, are part of African drama, how these have influenced the Caribbean aesthetic, and what the relationships are between the old and new world. Among the creators of the pieces are two Nobel Laureates, those who have been exiled or jailed for the political nature of their work, and the author of his country’s first constitution. The volume can serve as the primary text for an intensive semester-long investigation of African drama and culture. But it is also possible to use this volume along with others in the series as texts for a single course on drama from around the world. The global perspectives approach, letting works from ancient, indigenous, and modern times resonate with each other, encourages thinking across boundaries and connective human understanding.

Athol Fugard is South Africa’s most prominent international playwright. This is his only novel.

Tsotsi has been adopted as the Grade 11 official English novel in South Africa for 2016; a new generation will be exposed to Tsotsi and help it on its way to becoming a modern classic.

A white South African boy becomes aware of the meaning of racialism. Set in a tearoom in Port Elizabeth in the 1950s.

My Life is based on the diaries of five South African girls who were growing into womanhood in 1994. The perspective of each young woman on her country and her people is conveyed with a mixture of naivety, exuberance, warmth and humour. A small Karoo town provides the setting for Valley Song, which explores the theme of youth in search of itself, and provides a lyrical metaphor for the new South Africa in which it was set, and has been termed one of Fugard’s most endearing plays.

Two Black scavengers emerge from the underbrush loaded with their total possessions: the makings of a shack and a battery of pots and pans, but nothing to cook in them.

Athol Fugard het met die koms van sy tagtigste verjaarsdag besluit om ’n toneelstuk in sy ma se moedertaal te skryf, soos sy hom jare gelede gevra het. Met behulp van Riana Steyn se kennis en navorsing oor die karretjiemense het hierdie toneelstuk tot stand gekom. Dit is die verhaal van die Geduld-gesin, wat, na die dood van hul ouma Mieta, haar in die Karoo-veld onder klippe begrawe, soos die gebruik onder die karretjiemense is. Haar kleinkinders se enigste vooruitsig blyk die plakkerskamp naby Colesberg te wees. Hul pa, Koot, was op sy dag die voorste skaapskeerder, maar nou is hy in die tronk vir die moord op hy sy tweede vrou. Na sy vrylating spoor Sarah, ’n navorser wat jare gelede met die gesin te doen gehad het, hom op. Saam neem hul bestekopname van die karretjiemense se verlede en toekoms.

Roelf, a train driver, has spent weeks searching for the identities of a mother and child he unintentionally killed with his train. After a fruitless journey through shanty towns, he encounters an old gravedigger named Simon who helps the desperate man unburden his conscience. Based on a true story, The Train Driver is a soulful exploration of guilt, suffering, and the powerful bonds that grow between strangers.

Genre: Drama Characters: 2 males, 1 female Scenery: Bare Stage On board the SS Graigaur a young sailor begins to pen his first novel. Assisted by his muse, a portrait of his mother comes to life, and supported by his friend, an illiterate ship's mechanic, he struggles to balance romance and reality. This most personal of Athol Fugard's works is strictly autobiographical; at twenty he abandoned his university education, hitch hiked up Africa and ended up on a tramp steamer in Port Sudan. This play refl ects his attempts to come to terms with the conflicting emotions evoked by memories of his courageous mother and flawed father. "Charming... Admire The Captain's Tiger and the lovely way in which it is told." - The New York Daily News

Full Length, Drama

Characters: 2 male, 1 female

Unit set.

The great South African playwright confronts the tragedy of apartheid in his native land in this compelling tale about the efforts of a humble and humane black teacher in a segregated township to persuade just one young person that education, not violence, is the answer to South Africa's problems.

"A document of towering stature." Philadelphia Inquirer

"The drama vacillates superbly between political parable and personal tragedy." Village Voice

The power of theatrical performance is universal, but the style and concerns of theatre are specific to individual cultures. This volume in the Global Theatre Perspectives series presents a reconstructed ancient performance text, four one-act indigenous African plays and five modern dramas from various regions of Africa and the Caribbean Diaspora. Because these plays span centuries and are the work of artists from diverse cultures, readers can see elements that occur across time and space. Physicalized ritual, direct interaction with spectators, improvisation, music, drumming, and metaphorical animal characters help create the theatrical forms in multiple plays. Recurring themes include the establishment or challenging of political authority, the oppression or corruption of government, societal expectations based on gender, the complex and transformational nature of identity, and the power of dreams. Though each play is its own unique entity, reading them together allows readers to explore what theatrical elements and cultural concerns are perhaps essentially African. The Caribbean plays add further perspective to the questions of what values, theatrical and societal, are part of African drama, how these have influenced the Caribbean aesthetic, and what the relationships are between the old and new world. Among the creators of the pieces are two Nobel Laureates, those who have been exiled or jailed for the political nature of their work, and the author of his country’s first constitution. The volume can serve as the primary text for an intensive semester-long investigation of African drama and culture. But it is also possible to use this volume along with others in the series as texts for a single course on drama from around the world. The global perspectives approach, letting works from ancient, indigenous, and modern times resonate with each other, encourages thinking across boundaries and connective human understanding.

Tsotsi is an angry young gang leader in the South African township of Sophiatown. A man without a past, he exists only to kill and steal. But when he captures a woman one night in a moonlit grove of bluegum trees, she shoves a shoebox into his arms: the box contains a baby and his life is inexorably changed. He begins to remember his childhood and rediscover the self he left behind. Tsotsi's raw power and rare humanity show how decency and compassion can survive against the odds.

The search for a means to an end to apartheid erupts into conflict between a black township youth and his "old-fashioned" black teacher.

This play about a young white boy and two African servants is at once a compelling drama of South African apartheid and a universal coming-of-age story. Originally produced in 1982, it is now an acknowledged classic of the stage, whose themes of injustice, racism, friendship, and reconciliation traverse borders and time.

Drama / 3m (1 white, 2 black) / Int.

The role that won Zakes Mokae a Tony Award brought Danny Glover back to the New York stage for the Roundabout Theatre's revival of this searing coming of age story, considered by many to be Fugard's masterpiece. A white teen who has grown up in the affectionate company of the two black waiters who work in his mother's tea room in Port Elizabeth learns that his viciously racist alcoholic father is on his way home from the hospital. An ensuing rage unwittingly triggers his inevitable passage into the culture of hatred fostered by apartheid.

"One of those depth charge plays that] has lasting relevance and] can triumphantly survive any test of time...The story is simple, but the resonance that Fugard brings to it lets it reach beyond the narrative, to touch so many nerves connected to betrayal and guilt. An exhilarating play...It is a triumph of playmaking, and unforgettable."-New York Post

"Fugard creates a blistering fusion of the personal and the political."-The New York Times

"This revival brings out the play's] considerable strengths."-New York Daily News

It's 1952 on an old cargo ship somewhere on the Red Sea. A young man is beginning a "great adventure": a trip away from home, a voyage around the world, a journey to manhood, and a writer's odyssey. This is the setting for Athol Fugard's dramatic examination of his life as an artist shaped both by the family that raised him and the horrors of Apartheid in his war torn South African homeland. Subtitled a "Memoir for the Stage, " the play is told both from the point of view of the twenty-year-old author who was the captain's tiger -- a glorified personal servant to the ship's captain -- and the author as his current-day self.

This is a fascinating voyage -- a writer's pilgrimage, a whole painful process we are privy to. We witness his coming of age through author monologues, re-creations of onboard conversations, letters written to his mother, imagined discourse, and dreams. Fugard has created a personal dramatic structure moving from present to past, from reality to reverie. One of the author's most imaginative works, Fugard has created a world with imagery that is visual, visceral, and poetic.

Rarely has a playwright been so closely identified with his country and his people as Athol Fugard. Fugard's extensive body of work has served as one of the moral beacons in the bleak world of South Africa, and now, in Valley Song - this coming-of-age story about a young girl seeking the courage to embrace the future while her grandfather searches for the wisdom to let go of the past - he applies his great gift to the work of healing and of envisioning the future.

Fugard's well-known play about two squatters.

X-kit Achieve [subject, grade, e.g. Mathematics Grade 10] Study Guide has been revised to according incorporate the latest Assessment Guidelines (as outline in Section 4 of the CAPS), and updated with current trends to ensure the content remains relevant and applicable to learners. Written by experienced teachers, X-kit Achieve Study Guides are filled with step-by-step explanations, annotated diagrams and illustrated concepts, plenty of practice activities and answers, summary tables, and exam hints and tips.

A play which tells a gentle story of how the generations cope with the end of apartheid in South Africa. A young women wants to leave home to begin to lead her own life, but her grandfather takes this as an insult to his way of life and everything he has worked for.

The four plays in this edition of Athol Fugard's best work are set among the people and in the place he knows most intimately - Port Elizabeth, South Africa, where he grew up. Each explores a close and tense family situation or relationship against the background of wider suffering and tensions, engaging our sympathies for South Africans of all races in their struggle to retain dignity and hope.

This collection of Athol Fugard's plays confirms his reputation as 'South Africa's most accomplished playwright' (The Times). The collection includes the plays The Road to Mecca, A Place with the Pigs, My Children! My Africa!, Playland and Valley Song, and is introduced by the author.

"For me "The Train Driver"] is the biggest of them all. Everything I have written before has been a journey to this."--Athol Fugard

"A dramatic, moving theater experience written for South Africa. . . . It will save us from hopelessness. See it."--"Sunday Independent"

"The Train Driver" is classic Athol Fugard, and one of his most important plays. The playwright, known throughout the world as a chronicler of his native South Africa's apartheid past, directed its premiere at the newly opened Fugard Theater in one of Cape Town's most politically contentious areas. This seminal work was inspired by the true story of a mother who, with her three children, committed suicide on the train tracks in Cape Town. The two-person drama unfolds between the train's engineer and the grave digger who buries "the ones without names." This edition also includes "Coming Home," Fugard's first work addressing AIDS in South Africa, and "Have You Seen Us?" his first play set in America, about a South African transplanted to San Diego, where the playwright currently resides.

Athol Fugard's works includes "Blood Knot," "Master Harold. . .and the Boys," "Boesman and Lena," "Sizwe Banzi is Dead" and "My Children My Africa " He has been widely produced in South Africa, London, on Broadway, and across the United States.