A Tribute to Athol Fugard, 1932 - 2025

‘I’ve always sensed for myself an obligation to bear witness to my time.’ Athol Fugard, 1932 – 2025.

On Sunday we woke to the sad news that Athol Fugard had died aged 92.

The night before, Amy Jeptah’s A GOOD HOUSE played its final UK performance. Originally co-commissioned by the Royal Court and the Fugard Theatre, A Good House is an exploration of race in modern South Africa, the latest in a legacy of new South African plays presented at the Court that have found their roots on our stages in Fugard’s groundbreaking work

During his lifetime, many of Fugard’s plays received their UK premieres at the Royal Court, across both our theatres. Notably the South African season in early 1974, a triple bill of Statements After An Arrest Under The Immortality Act, The Island and Sizwe Bansi Is Dead. Performed by co-authors and regular Fugard collaborators, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, Sizwe Bansi Is Dead transferred into the West End and later onto Broadway to play in rep with The Island, Kani and Ntshona jointly winning the Tony Award for Best Actor in 1975.

Much of Fugard’s work railed against apartheid and racial segregation in South Africa. Producing and premiering these plays was a consistent challenge, over time companies and theatres were created that found legal loopholes to protect the artists and audiences wanting to attend his work – most famously the Space Theatre, which operated as a private club to allow performances to racially mixed audiences, something illegal in apartheid South Africa. However, this didn’t stop consistent police raids and interference from the municipal authorities. Actors and creatives staging Fugard’s plays often had to work under pseudonyms, being listed as fictional names on publicity materials and in programmes.

Famously quoted as saying ‘I am a storyteller, not a political pamphleteer’, Fugard’s work was deeply political but did not solely stay at the level of its immediate politics but transcended them. Therefore, even though Fugard lived to see an end to apartheid and legal segregation, his plays still have huge, universal resonance for audiences today.

There are many playwrights that, together, make the legacy of the Royal Court. However, only a handful who are consistently spoken about weekly by new writers in our offices, playwrighting groups and forums. Fugard is one of those playwrights. While today he may be gone, through his work, through the relationships and exchange his plays opened between the Court and new writers in South Africa, Athol will always be with us.

To read more about Athol Fugard and South African plays at the Royal Court Theatre, visit our Living Archive here.