Acclaimed South African playwright Athol Fugard, whose works included The Blood Knot, Boesman and Lena, Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, The Island, The Road to Mecca, and “Master Harold”…and the boys, died on March 8. He was 92. This is one of two memorial tributes we’re publishing this week; the other, by writer/director Emily Mann, is here.
Snapshot 1
It’s January 1977 and I’m an art history student at UMass on my first museum and theatre pilgrimage to London. I have a camera, but I do not have a clue that I will make a living with it.
It’s a chilly night in the West End, and I am spellbound by two South African actors delighting the audience with the exotic story of men who struggle with the terrible oppression of the pass laws under the apartheid regime by using their wits and a stroke of luck to fight back. One of the characters is a portrait photographer, and his mimicry of prideful posing was a comic tour de force. Thus was I introduced to John Kani and Winston Ntshona, in Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Banzi Is Dead.
Snapshot 2
It’s March 1980 and I am a subscriber at Yale Rep, where Maria Tucci , Harris Yulin, and James Earl Jones have just devastated an audience in A Lesson from Aloes, another deeply human story from the inside of a surveillance state where even friends are suspect. I will never forget the feeling of violation, sanctioned by a faceless state, that this incredible trio brought to life. The Fugard name is now seared into my brain.
Snapshot 3
It’s March 1982, and I’m now the university photographer for Yale, my proletariat education notwithstanding, and a random assignment sends me to a dismal rehearsal space at the Yale Rep where I find the playwright and Žjelko Ivanek, Danny Glover, and Zakes Mokae at the first table read of “Master Harold”…and the boys. I’m able to borrow a light from a departing photographer to cut the gloom and spend no more than 10 minutes watching one of the most charismatic people I have ever seen leading his cast through the play. What a great face…and that voice, wow!
Snapshot 4
October 1984. Athol returns to direct the U.S. premiere of The Road to Mecca at the Yale Rep. I take the opportunity to show him the photos from the previous session (which happened to end up on the cover of American Theatre) and he immediately invites me to a rehearsal at the well worn Crown Street space, where I get to hang for an hour or two and watch as he refills his pipe and regales the company with stories of real people living real lives half a world away. I’ve never seen anyone more deferential to his audience at the same time that he held them in his hand.
Snapshot 5
October 1985. Athol is appearing in The Blood Knot with Zakes Mokae, and invites me to continue with our portrait sessions. I tell him I have just started working at my second theatre, Hartford Stage, and he encourages me to pursue theatre as much as possible, because, he says, “I can tell from your photos you speak with your camera.” Wow!
Snapshot 6
It’s April 1988 and Athol is premiering A Place With the Pigs at Yale Rep. We continue our portrait sessions and I get the treat of my first photo with the man, along with this leonine pose in front of the set.
Snapshot 7
It’s a really hot day in June 1990 in Northampton, Massachusetts, and Athol is the keynote speaker at the TCG conference. I buttonhole him and ask if he would be willing to review my theatre portfolio, now that I have been freelancing for five years at a growing number of theatres. We arrange a meeting: “Charlie, you’ve got five minutes,” he says as I hand him a stack of 8x10s; 30 seconds later, on photo number 10, he says, “We’ll work together. Keep going!”
Snapshot 8
August 1990. I get the call to come to La Jolla Playhouse at Athol’s request for the premiere of Playland. We continue our portraits and I get this shot, which has become my favorite because it shows the twinkling humor of a playwright who’s just given his audience the finger!
Snapshot 9
It’s 1995 and Athol has found a new host in the U.S. at the McCarter Theatre under Emily Mann, where once again our paths cross happily. He will go on to act in Valley Song and The Captain’s Tiger as well as direct Sorrows and Rejoicings.
Snapshot 10
It’s 2009. Athol has a new berth at Long Wharf, where my professional theatre career began in 1984. Over five years he premieres three beautiful new plays: Coming Home, Have You Seen Us?, and The Shadow of the Hummingbird.
It’s April Fool’s Day, and the phone rings. “Charlie, this is Athol Fugard, and I’m calling to tell you you are a fucking genius of a theatre photographer…If only the critics understood my plays the way you do, I would be a happy man!” Elation and surprise fill me as I stammer out my thanks for this unexpected testimony. I think he knew what a tremendous influence and support he had been to me in building my art history of the American theatre, which stood at 1,100 productions during that call, and now numbers more than 2,100 plays presented by 84 different theatres and producers from coast to coast.
All this even though, on the day I met him, I was not even an apprentice.
Snapshot 11
The Shadow of the Hummingbird in March of 2014, when he took the stage for the last time in my presence, 32 years after our first meeting.
As Athol would always sign off, with gratitude and great respect: touched by a giant.
