Athol Fugard, the South African playwright whose portrayals of intimate relationships burdened by oppressive racial separatism exposed the cruel psychological torment of apartheid to an international audience, died on Saturday night at his home in Stellenbosch, a town near Cape Town. He was 92.
His wife, Paula Fourie, said he died after a cardiac event.
carnivalcity7Over a long and productive career, Mr. Fugard (pronounced FEW-guard) was both repelled and fueled by the bond he felt with his homeland.
For decades he was considered subversive by the government; at times productions of his work, with their integrated casts, were considered illegal, and his co-workers in the theater were jailed. In 1967, after his early play “The Blood Knot” appeared on British television, his passport was revoked, so that for several years he could not leave the country.
He eventually spent many years abroad, including in the United States — he worked on productions of his plays at Yale and taught at the University of California,fef777 San Diego — yet he could never let himself leave South Africa for good. Even before apartheid was officially revoked in 1994, he maintained a home near Port Elizabeth, the city where he grew up, on the country’s southeastern coast.
“I think I actually need the sustaining provocation of being in South Africa when I’m telling a South Africa story,” Mr. Fugard said in an interview with The New Yorker in 1982.
Viscerally powerful for audiences, their roles written with the muscle and idiosyncrasy that are candy to actors, Mr. Fugard’s more than 30 plays were presented widely in the United States and around the world. Six have appeared on Broadway, and in 2011, he received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement.
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