S: This is your second play featuring an
Outsider Artist. What do you find so dramatically
compelling about these characters?
AF: I’m an Outsider Artist. The Outsider Artist is
defined very simply and accurately as someone
(right): Athol Fugard
at the first rehearsal
of Blood Knot, 2012.
who has created something significant or beautiful
with no formal training in any artistic discipline –
(below): Sam Waterson
and Liza Colón-Zayas
in Have You Seen Us?
at Long Wharf Theatre,
2009.
as was the case with Helen Martins [whose life and
work inspired Fugard’s The Road to Mecca] in the
little village of Nieu Bethesda. In the case of Helen,
it was sculpture. She crowded a backyard with
these amazing statues of wise men and camels
and a mythical journey to Mecca; for her that was
the source of all light. And she was so motivated
by a very specific vision. And when I happened
Athol Fugard’s 2012 Residency One season was one of
firsts for Signature—the first in the new Pershing Square
Signature Center, and the first featuring an international
playwright. Here, we look back at highlights from that
groundbreaking year.
to stumble on Nukain Mabusa, I was immediately
In Blood Knot, two brothers—
one dark-skinned, the other
light—dream of a better future,
only to find that the deep
racial divisions tearing their
country apart extend into their
own home. Scott Shepherd
and Colman Domingo played
the roles originated by
Athol Fugard and Zakes Mokae
a half century earlier.
was two years of college, after which I hitchhiked
In a high school classroom, an
idealistic teacher challenges
apartheid by sponsoring a
mixed-race academic quiz
team, but the radical upheavals
of 1980s South Africa threaten
to overtake his vision. Directed
by Ruben Santiago-Hudson,
My Children! My Africa!
posed powerful questions
about race, revolution, and
the possibility of change.
struck by the fact that here again, with no training
whatsoever, he painted all the rocks on this one
little hill on the farm where he worked as a laborer.
The only education I’ve had in terms of college
through Africa, because I realized I wasn’t made
to be a teacher or an academic. My life had to be
about words on paper. So being an Outsider Artist
in a sense myself, I naturally respond to somebody
like Nukain Mabusa or Helen Martins.
S: Act One of the play takes place in the early
1980s, near the end of Mabusa’s life. Why did you
decide to set Act Two several decades later?
AF: When I first started thinking about Nukain
Mabusa, I imagined a play that just dealt with the
living Mabusa. But then my partner, Paula Fourie,
said, “You know, ‘81 is fine, that’s a very important moment because the whole of South Africa
was under a state of emergency, and we lived
within the confines of that until ‘91. But you’re
not