Athol Fugard
(Photo: Gregory Costanzo)

Athol Fugard, the South African playwright and director whose searing dramas confronted the brutal realities of apartheid and found a lasting home on the New York stage, died on March 8. His wife, Paula Fourie, confirmed the death, caused by a cardiac event. He was 95.

Fugard was born on June 11, 1932, in Middleburg, South Africa. His early exposure to the racial injustices of his homeland shaped his work. His breakthrough play, The Blood Knot (later retitled Blood Knot), premiered in 1961, telling the story of two brothers—one light-skinned and the other dark-skinned—grappling with South Africa’s rigid racial divides. The play found an international audience and was later produced in London and New York City.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Fugard continued to push artistic and political boundaries, despite strict censorship in South Africa. In 1974, he made his New York debut as both writer and director with Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and The Island, two plays created in collaboration with actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona. Both works played at the Edison Theatre on Broadway and earned critical acclaim.

Fugard’s presence in New York grew over the next decade. A Lesson from Aloes debuted on Broadway in 1980, winning the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Foreign Play. Two years later, “Master Harold”…and the boys, an autobiographical drama set in 1950s South Africa, became one of his most celebrated works. It premiered on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre in 1982 starring Danny Glover, Zakes Mokae and Lonny Price—Fugard directed—and was later revived in 2003. “There may be two or three living playwrights in the world who can write as well as Athol Fugard, but I’m not sure any of them has written a recent play that can match ‘Master Harold’… and the Boys,’” Frank Rich wrote in his New York Times review. The 1985 Broadway production of Blood Knot featured Fugard himself in the lead role.

New York remained a vital platform for Fugard throughout his career. His final Broadway production, The Road to Mecca, arrived in 2012 at the American Airlines Theatre. In 2011, Fugard received a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre.