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People who have worked with Athol
Fugard
Zakes Mokae

Zakes Mokae was born in Johannesburg, South
Africa 1935. Educated at RADA (actors school) in
London.

A major Fugard actor working
with Fugard in The Serpent Players, he has
premiered many of Fugards plays including
No-Good Friday, Nongogo, Blood Knot, Master
Harold and the Boys. He is a sophisticated
support actor in mainstream films. He also often
appears in horror films. His best roles in horror
films are in Dust Devil, and The Serpent and the
Rainbow. His best mainstream acting is in A Dry
White Season.
Click
here to read more on Zakes Mokae.
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John Kani

A distinguished South African actor who
worked extensively with Fugard during his
Statements period. Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The
Island are credited to Fugard, Kani and Winston
Ntshona. He is a director of Johannesburg's market Theatre.
Kani has appeared in films such as Dry
White Season (in which Zakes Mokae also appears),
Fugard films such as Marigolds in August and
Master Harold... and the Boys and other films
such as Lessingīs The Grass is Singing.
When Kani played in Miss Julie by Strindberg he
caused almost rioting and a political scandal as
he presented on-stage a multi-racial affair.
Recently he has been touring the world with
Fugard and Ntshona presenting a revival of their Island, and has
written and performed his own play Nothing but the Truth.
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Winston Ntshona

A distinguished South African actor who
like John Kani has worked extensively with Fugard
during his Statements period. Sizwe Bansi is Dead
and The Island are credited to Fugard, Kani and
Winston Ntshona. Kani has also appeared in
films such as Dry White Season (in which Zakes
Mokae and John Kani also appear), as well as a
few other minor films. Recently he has been
touring the world with Fugard and Kani presenting
a revival of their Island.
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Barney Simon

Barney Simon founded The Market Theatre
which became a centre for experimentation. The
most famous example is probably Island by Fugard,
improvised with Kani and Ntshona. He wrote
Cold Stone Jug and co-wrote Woza
Albert! A new book, Athol Fugard and Barney Simon
: Bare Stage, a Few Props, Great Theatre by Mary
Benson, deals with the Benson's friendship with
Fugard and Simon. The title is a quote by Fugard
on what he needed for a new play.
He died in 1995. Fugardīs Valley
Song is dedicated to him.
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Mannie Manim

A co-founder of the Market Theatre, Manim
is a lighting designer whose Fugard premieres
include Playland and Valley Song. The
history site of the Market Theatre says: "the
meeting of Barney Simon and Mannie Manim is one
of those fortunate happenings that occur more
often on stage than off. Their backgrounds could
not have been more disparate - Manim the product
of a Portuguese/Afrikaans heritage, Simon, his
roots torn from the shtetl. As different as were
their origins so were their paths towards The
Market. 'Mannie', observes Simon, 'came from
above ground, I came from way below.'
"Manim says it was at the
Brooke Theatre that he saw Athol Fugards Good Friday, an event
he says, made him see theatre in an all new light and open his
mind to the many opportunities that existed." (from
Artslink.co.za News 11/05/201.
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Susan Hilferty

Designer of 16 Fugard plays including
Valley Song and A Place with the Pigs.
"Susan also designs for films,
television and dance and has been the recipient
of many awards for her work in theatre including
the Michael Merrit Award for Excellence in
Design. She is a graduate of the Yale School of
Drama and teaches at New York
University". For television she
has designed Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors and
she also designed the Laurie Anderson film/video
Home of the Brave. The image is from
here.
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Sheila Fugard

Fugardīs wife. Fugard met Sheila Meiring
when she was starting as an actress. She worked
with Fugard on his early plays and became a
novelist and poet in her own right. She was
born in Birmingham, UK. Her most famous
work is A Revolutionary Woman. Set in 1920s South
Africa "We are men made big by these
landscapes" a woman is trying to apply her
Gandhian philosophy and becomes entangled in a
rape case involving a black boy. Rite of
Passage confronts a doctor racked with guilt and
a youth traumatised by a tribal circumcision
ceremony. Like some of Atholīs plays,
people who need to communicate are trapped by
language. The writing is at times forced
"Only children live in the empty spaces of
the mind. Like the hollow skulls of dead
seagulls", but generally is gifted.
Athol Fugard acted in the BBC adaptation of her
other novel Castaways.
Her books of poetry are
Threshold and Mythic Things, at times similar to
Norman Macaig:
"Hunting the wild blood
of spring
I accidentally
Overtook
The wildly running hare
And in my stab at distance in flight
I witnessed a death"
(from Hunting, Threshold).
Another poem is Lena
"You walked there
Along brown road that struggles on beyond kopjie
and grass
Into the future..."
(photo by Mary Benson from A Revolutionary
Woman)
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Lisa Fugard

Fugardīs daughter. She has acted in various
Fugard plays, such as My Children! My Africa!
opposite John Kani and directed by Athol
Fugard. She has also published an acclaimed novel,
Skinner's Drift.

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Ross Davenish
Collaborator on film with Fugard, directing a
number of films such as The Guest, Boesman and
Lena and Marigolds in August. When they
filmed Boesman and Lena together the shooting was
continually observed by the South African police.
He talks about the events and the influence of
Fugard in "Hollywood Apartheid".
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Brian Astbury and Yvonne
Bryceland

Together with Fugard, husband and wife
Brian Astbury and Yvonne Bryceland founded the
Space Theatre in Cape Town, where the Statement
plays were developed. Yvonne played Frieda
opposite Ben Kingsley in the premiere of
Statements after an Arrest under The Immorality
Act in 1974. Her performance in The Road to
Mecca won her the 1985 Olivier Award for best
actress. She died in 1992. Her films include The
Road to Mecca and Boesman and Lena.
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Kristina Stanley

American director whose works include the
American premiere of Fugardīs Dimetos. Other
Fugard stagings are The Island,
Statements After An Arrest Under the Immorality
Act and The Road to Mecca.
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