Athol Fugard's plays, like Blood Knot and Master Harold and the Boys, were about the emotional and psychological consequences of Apartheid. He also formed an integrated theater company in the 1960s, in defiance of South African norms. The playwright, who died Saturday, spoke with Terry Gross in 1986. And we remember soul singer/songwriter Jerry Butler, who sang with Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions before going solo. Jazz historian Kevin Whitehead marks the centennial of the birth of Roy Haynes, one of the most in-demand drummers of the genre.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: Who was Athol Fugard and what impact did he have?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. As a playwright, actor, and director, Athol Fugard defied South Africa's apartheid system, and the government punished him for it. He died Saturday at the age of 92. We're going to listen back to the interview we recorded in 1986, eight years before the end of apartheid.
Fugard was a white South African who wrote about the emotional and psychological consequences of his country's white supremacist system. When Fugard co-starred in his 1961 play The Blood Knot with black actor Zakes Mukai, they became the first black and white actors in South African history to share a stage.
Soon after, Fugard was approached by a group of black actors seeking his help to start a company. Together, they formed the Serpent Players. The company was frequently harassed by the authorities. A few members were imprisoned. Fugard's reputation for defiance spread, and in 1967, the government revoked his passport. It was restored four years later.
Fugard wrote more than 30 plays, including Master Harold and the Boys and Bozeman and Lena. He co-wrote the plays Sizwe Banzwe is Dead and The Island with the black South African actors John Connie and Winston and Shana. His plays have been staged in the US. Six of his plays were produced on Broadway. He won a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2011.
When I spoke with Fugard in 1986, I asked him why he remained in South Africa, where he lived under the apartheid system he opposed.
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Chapter 2: What were Athol Fugard's experiences with censorship and apartheid?
I suppose it's a question of my continued existence as a writer. I just couldn't see myself writing about any other place or any other time. I have on occasions in the past described myself as a regional writer, not meaning to be falsely modest or anything like that, but a regional writer in the sense I think that Faulkner was a regional writer in America and my region is South Africa.
Do you feel constrained there at all by limitations of what will be allowed to be performed on stage?
I think I've become so used to living with that danger, with the danger of censorship. And in some ways, the situation today is a lot easier than it was in the past. I mean, I had to contend with a South Africa that was much more authoritarian in terms of its control over the arts than is the case today.
where the government has attempted to persuade the outside world that it's moving in a liberal direction by allowing certain things to take place in theatre and in the arts generally, which wasn't the case many years ago. I do not feel constrained. I've learned how to live with that.
Do you ever feel that if your work is not censored, then you're not doing your job?
Yes, there is a terrible – there is the danger of a terrible sort of snobbery along those lines, you know, that if you haven't been banned or if your work hasn't been censored or let's put it even crudely, if you haven't been to jail at least once – Or if you haven't been raided by the security police and searched in the early hours of the morning, you haven't actually earned your credentials.
Unfortunately, yes, I think a little bit of that does operate back home.
What do you think is the power of theater or art in general to help topple the apartheid system? Do you think of art in those terms? Do you think of art as having an overt political function?
Well, it obviously does have that. I mean, I, for example, I heard a story about a South African woman who had had very, very strong traditional South African attitudes and who for some reason or the other had been at Yale when I was doing Master Harold, who had come along and seen the play and who had been so affected by that production and who had in fact undergone a change of heart.
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Chapter 3: How did Athol Fugard's personal history influence 'Master Harold and the Boys'?
Well, Serpent Players were a group I worked with in my hometown of Port Elizabeth. And Port Elizabeth has always been a difficult area for me because the authorities there have consistently refused to allow me to go into the black ghetto areas, into the black townships. So in order to work with Serpent Players, we had to find a sort of neutral territory area.
halfway between their black world and my white world, and in fact in one of the twilight zones in Port Elizabeth. And that is where we would get together and rehearse and meet. And I was faced with these sort of... rather an unhappy situation where sometimes I would direct a play and not be able to attend performances of it.
Your play Master Harold and the Boys is based in part on the relationship you had when you were young with a black man who was a waiter I think at a cafe that your mother ran and There's an incident in the play that I think is based on an incident in your life where the young white boy, who's the son of the mother who owns the cafe, who's really very close with the waiter, spits in his face.
From what I understand, it was very difficult for you to write that part in. Can I ask about the personal significance that that event had for you
Yes, that did happen. Tragically, regrettably, a moment of... a cauterising, traumatic moment of shame in my life that I still live with, that was there at a point in my childhood coming out of... I can remember the day, a spasm of bewilderment and confusion. I can't remember what had upset me so much that day, but...
I turned on the one person I had in my life, the one true friend I had, and he was a black man, and he worked for my family, he worked for my mother as a waiter in this little tea room we had. I spat in Sam's face. And the moment I had done it, I knew what I had done. A second after I had done it, I knew that I had most probably done one of the truly ugly things of my entire life.
Even though I was only 13 years old, I knew that it was going to be very, very hard for me to ever equal the ugliness of what I had done. Because, I mean, I had sullied, I had dirtied. One of the most beautiful things I had in my life was that friendship. And I've lived with that. I lived with that shame and still do live with the shame of that act. And when it came to... to writing the play.
I didn't write the play just for that reason in an attempt to finally deal with that moment. I'd been trying to write about Sam and another man that worked for the family as well, also as a waiter, a man called Willie. I'd been trying to write about Sam and Willie for a long time in my life just to celebrate them because they were two very, very beautiful human beings. And
Very instrumental, very important in me finally starting on a process of emancipation from the prejudices of my country, of the traditional South African way of life. I just wanted to celebrate those two men. And when I finally put the little boy in there with him, I realized that I potentially had an opportunity to do both that and also deal with this unbelievably ugly thing that I had done.
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Chapter 4: What were the experiences of working with integrated theater in apartheid South Africa?
that the full extent of the of the of what apartheid meant and does and was doing dawned on me it was brought home to me now that was one of the if I can talk about spitting in Sam's face as being the traumatic personal moment that was the traumatic social moment that was a moment in terms of my political conscience
Was that about the time that you started writing plays also?
Yes, yes. That is in fact the period when my very first published play was written. I still think of it as an apprenticeship work and it precedes The Blood Knot, a play called No Good Friday. It was also the first play. It marks the first meeting with Zakes Mokai, who is in The Blood Knot with me.
I know one thing that drives a lot of white people who live in South Africa crazy is that every time you sit on a bench or board a bus or enter into certain stores, you are in a way making a complicit act with apartheid, if that is a segregated bench or bus or store. And I wonder how you reconcile that now.
The thing that you have to live with constantly in South Africa as a white South African who opposes the system is that even in opposing the system, even in doing what you can by way of writing plays or protesting or doing this, your daily life is still rotten with compromise. And you're involved in that very, very dangerous exercise of hoping that
that what you do at one level outweighs that, that the way you live, the fact that you live in a whites-only area among affluent white people, you hope that those compromises haven't irremediably stained or poisoned your life, that you somehow are still making some contribution towards an eventual decency in that society. It's a dangerous lifestyle.
I mean, but there's no way of avoiding it other than to get out. And if I get out, how am I contributing to anything then? I still have got to believe that being inside that country, inside that society, even though I have to live with these compromises that somehow I still contribute more by being inside and doing my thing than I would be by going into voluntary or enforced exile.
Do you feel that yourself and other white people who oppose apartheid end up feeling that they have to shoulder a lot of guilt for being there or for acts that may seem compromised from your youth before you gain the awareness that you have now?
Oh, that's very important. You really are touching on one of the most... One of the major factors in the psychology of the white South African is the operation, the presence of, the genesis of, the hoped-for elimination of guilt. Major, major factor. God knows, I think that... I mean, I lived with that as one of the most potent factors in my psychology. As I've said before, 53 years old now.
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Chapter 5: How did Athol Fugard's plays confront racism in South Africa and America?
kind of racism than the apartheid kind and because it's happening over there and we are not directly implicated in it, it's easier to perhaps not internalize some of the statements that you're making within your place.
Very interesting. You are absolutely right. I mean, I would go along with what you have just said 100%. It's very interesting actually to sort of examine in what respects racism in the two countries, racism in South Africa and America, are similar and dissimilar.
the way racism in South Africa, because it is institutionalized, because it is in a sense the system, it is built into the system, the way in a sense it frees the individual of having to, you know what I mean is, South Africa has never produced a lynch party. You get my point? The lynch mob is something unknown in South Africa for the simple reason our system does it for us.
Our system hangs them. We don't have to get together as a mob and go out after the black man.
Is there a time that you have in your mind when you think you would actually leave South Africa, if things reached a certain point?
I would never leave South Africa. I'd like to believe I would never leave South Africa. But in making that decision, I mean, I sort of commit my wife to it as well. I haven't quite resolved that one for myself yet.
My interview with Ethel Fugard was recorded in 1986. He died Saturday at age 92. After we take a short break, we'll listen back to an interview with soul singer Jerry Butler, who died last month. And we'll remember jazz drummer Roy Haynes. Today is the centennial of his birth. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
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The great soul singer Jerry Butler died last month at the age of 85. We're going to remember him by listening back to our interview from 2000. He first recorded with the group The Impressions, which he co-founded with his friend Curtis Mayfield. Butler sang lead on The Impressions' 1958 hit For Your Precious Love, which he also co-wrote.
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Chapter 6: What is the legacy of soul singer Jerry Butler?
Actually, this song and the lyrics. were an actual conversation that I had with my mother when I was about 16 years old. I was in love with an older woman, if you can believe that. And naturally, she said, this is a kid. I've got to move on with my life and do some other things. And so she just kind of dropped me like a hot potato. So I went and told Mama, hey, look, this is the end of the world.
She said, boy... Let me tell you this, that you have not seen half of the beautiful, lovely women in this world, and for you to be going through these kinds of changes this early in your life is absolutely ridiculous. Get out of here, you'll get over it. And Only the Strong Survive was really created out of that conversation.
Kenny Gabler and Leon Huff were the co-writers on it, but the introduction that was recited was really from that conversation with my mother.
What would you say is the importance of this song in your career?
You know, first of all, it was the first legitimate... gold record. And when I say legitimate gold record, I mean, For Your Precious Love and He Will Break Your Heart probably were gold records, but I never received one for it. Only the Strong Survive was the first record that I actually got from a recording company that said, you are certified as having sold over a million copies of this song.
But more important than that was that it was during the period of the civil rights movement, it was near the end of A lot of things were happening. The Black Power movement was in vogue. And as a matter of fact, I realized that the song was a hit doing a concert at Prairie View College in Prairie View, Texas.
And the kids had kind of adopted the slogan, Only the Strong Survive, as their theme song. And then there were a bunch of soldiers who came back from Vietnam who told me that only the strong survive was helpful in seeing them through some very trying times, and they believed that it had helped them to come out of those foxholes.
Now, you first sang gospel music. You were part of a group called the Northern Jubilee Singers, and Curtis Mayfield was in that group, too. And, of course, you also sang together in The Impressions. How did you first meet?
Curtis's grandmother, the Reverend Annabelle Mayfield, was the pastor of this little congregation called the Traveling Soul Spiritualist Church. And Curtis's older cousins... had this little group called the Northern Jubilee Singers. I wound up at this church one afternoon with a friend of mine, a fellow by the name of Terry Williams. Because we just had singing in common and loved to do it.
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Chapter 7: What is the story behind Jerry Butler's hit 'Only the Strong Survive'?
And then he kind of just took over because he was the real musician out of the group.
Had your voice changed yet?
As a matter of fact, it had. My voice went into the baritone register when I was about 13, and it has never come up again.
What about Curtis Mayfield? His couldn't have. He was only nine. How did he sound?
Well, you know, Curtis was just the opposite. Curtis always kind of sounded like a little girl, you know. Gotta keep on pushing. Can't stop now. Move up a little higher. So he always had that kind of thing going. And I think over time, he effectively, as Smokey has done, used it to the point that it became really kind of his natural sound.
Now, did you and Curtis Mayfield leave gospel music for Rhythm and Blues at about the same time?
You know, we were never big and famous, as was Sam Cooke or Lou Rawls with the Pilgrim Travelers and Sam Cooke with the Soulsters. And so when we started singing Rhythm and Blues, nobody was really affected by it, but maybe the people who belonged to the church and us. When Sam left,
That was an uproar throughout the whole country in most of the churches because here was this gospel icon that had gone from singing the sacred music to singing the secular music. But Curtis and I, we really made the, and I would like to say we made an extension rather than a transition.
Because even in Curtis's music throughout the civil rights movement or what have you, you can still hear the strains of the gospel. And he really wrote kind of inspirational songs as opposed to what I call hope to die love songs, which are the kind of things that I was writing.
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