‘Between Me and My Country’: Fugard's ‘My Children! My Africa!’ at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg

Abstract

Continuing our coverage of South African theatre, which most recently featured a critical view of the policy of the Market Theatre, Johannesburg, by David Graver and Loren Kruger (in NTQ19), we now include a consideration by South African writer Stephen Gray of one of the Market's most recent productions, by assuredly its best-known playwright, Athol Fugard. My Children! My Africa! is, claims Fugard, ‘between me and my country’. Here, Stephen Gray acknowledges and analyzes the ways in which the play focuses with a new intensity upon the agony of Fugard's native land, as realized by a cast of three: two unknowns, plus the veteran John Kani – here cast, controversially, as a coward and traitor to his people. Stephen Gray has also edited the documentary volume on Athol Fugard in McGraw-Hill's ‘Southern African Literature’ series.