South Africa This article is more than 13 years oldAthol Fugard berates dramatists for failing to confront injustice
This article is more than 13 years oldSouth African playwright says modern writers are catering for 'attention spans of 10 minutes between adverts'Today's dramatists are failing to confront issues of injustice, writing instead "for attention spans of 10 minutes between adverts", leading political playwright Athol Fugard has said.
Fugard was a courageous dramatic voice throughout the apartheid era in his native South Africa, enduring censorship, police surveillance, phone-tapping and raids. He was the first to put black and white actors together on the South African stage.
Fugard, 78, is still writing and directing – a new play premieres in Britain this autumn. Speaking to the Guardian, he said he wants "to pass on the baton" to the next generation but is dismayed by a general failure to engage with political issues.
He applauded some of the "extraordinary" political work that has emerged from British and American theatre, singling out Sir David Hare for praise. But he added: "They're not doing enough … at the moment. The world we're living is getting worse, not better."
Playwrights are not adequately confronting subjects such as China's dictatorship and its new colonialism, which are "without significant protest", nor the decline of western morality, African leaders like Robert Mugabe, or drug abuse worldwide, he said.
Fugard, born of English and Afrikaans parents, suggested that playwrights are wary of criticising delicate themes like Muslim extremism or black corruption, adding: "That's part of the problem."
He also pointed to box-office pressures and the lure of film and television, which, he said, had lowered quality.
"With so many young playwrights, the true craft of writing for living voices is not what it used to be. They write for attention spans of 10 minutes between adverts."
Theatre might command smaller audiences than cinema, he said, "but cinema is a passive experience … you could keep [a film] rolling for an empty house. In the theatre, the audience is actively engaged.
"Look at the avalanche of well-meaning Hollywood films about Iraq, yet we're still there, killing. In South Africa we had to work in small venues, but our dissident writers made a major contribution to the fact that dialogue eventually replaced bombs and bullets."
Though active from the 1950s, the dramatist made his international reputation in the 70s and 80s with plays such as The Road to Mecca and Master Harold … and the Boys, both focusing on the injustices of apartheid.In November, at the Hampstead Theatre in north London, he will direct the European premiere of The Train Driver, a devastatingcritique of present day South Africa. Inspired by a true story, a black woman's suicide forces a white train-driver to look at the wretched lives of the black underclass.
Fugard said: "Karl Marx said that religion is the opium of the people. Sport is that today. The World Cup was a massive dose. Now we must go back to reality … South Africans are living in the most appalling conditions. There are real issues … stories that need to be told."
Nicolas Kent, artistic director of the Tricycle Theatre, disputed Fugard's criticisms. He said: "There's more political theatre than there's ever been." But others agreed with Fugard. Philip Hedley, former director of the Theatre Royal Stratford East, said today's political plays were "too narrow".
He added: "There's a bigger picture. So often today, you feel swamped with the little issue, but where's the 'guiding-thread' to get to the core of the big moral issue? Arthur Miller with The Crucible resounds with so many political issues, but he doesn't get stuck with the witchcraft. These playwrights were thinking on a much bigger canvas."
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