In 1962 five Xhosa tribesmen approached Fugard wanting to start a theater company. Within a year, they returned to South Africa and he wrote the first of his so-called “Port Elizabeth plays,” The Blood Knot.
In 1959 he and his wife went to London to gain more theatrical experience. This experience inspired his first play, No- Good Friday, which was performed privately for white audiences. He also became friends with black people and saw their living conditions. There, Fugard saw racial injustice firsthand. In 1958 he took a job as a clerk with a local court to support his family. They formed the Circle Players in Johannesburg. Fugard wanted to be a novelist-indeed he finished a manuscript-but watching his wife audition for plays, Fugard became interested in the theater too. When he returned to South Africa in 1956, he met and married Sheila Meiring, an actress. Fugard was the only white crew member on the ship for two years, an experience that eliminated his racial prejudice. In the middle of his senior year, he dropped out of college and became a sailor. Fugard attended the University of Cape Town on a scholarship, where he studied philosophy and social anthropology. Growing up, Fugard was keenly aware of the racial divisions in the city and their economic and social consequences. When Fugard was three years old his family moved to the diverse city AUTHOR BIOGRAPHYįugard was born in Middleburg, Cape Province, South Africa, on June 11, 1932. Critics and scholars have also observed that Sizwe Bansi Is Dead contains elements of absurdism, especially its sparse setting and surreal subject matter. Although these restrictions are specifically South African, critics have noted that the play’s greater theme of identity is universal. In court, Fugard saw the repercussions of this law: blacks were sent to jail at an alarming rate. At that time it was required that every black and colored citizen over the age of sixteen carried an identity book that restricted employment and travel within in the country. The genesis of Sizwe Bansi Is Dead can be traced to Fugard’s experiences as a law clerk at the Native Commissioner’s Court in Johannesburg. The play made its British debut a year or so later and won The London Theatre Critics award for the best play of 1974. It made its debut on October 8, 1972, in Cape Town, South Africa. Sizwe Bansi Is Dead was written in collaboration with two African actors, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, both of whom appeared in the original production.
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