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South African playwright Athol Fugard continues to shine a harsh light on his country's racially segregated recent past. Though apartheid has ended there, Fugard's themes have shifted to include the country's need for reconciliation and the guilt many feel in post-apartheid South Africa.His new play, "The Train Driver," which premiered in South Africa in March, uses the shocking death of a black Cape Town woman and her three children as its central event. It is seen through the lens of the white South African train driver who inadvertently killed them. The Los Angeles Times wrote about the play, [Fugard] remains a natural-born storyteller, and 'The Train Driver,' sets us up for a fascinating tale Fugard knows how to whet an audiences narrative hunger. As in his other works, such as 1969's award-winning "Boesman and Lena" and 1982's "Master Harold ... and the Boys," Fugard's characters struggle with the tragedy of South Africa's apartheid, and its earlier colonialism. They mourn its losses and rail against its villains.According to Fugard, this new play is the culmination of his feelings about his country's dark past. For me, ...everything I have written before has been a journey to this refusing to allow the dead to pass into oblivion, he said at the play's South African performance.The real-life incident The Train Driver is based on took place in 2000. A woman who lived in a squatter camp, killed herself and her three children by stepping in front of an on-coming train. After reading a South African newspaper account of it, Fugard has said he needed a way to understand their deaths. I immediately recognized I had an appointment with, something which I felt I would be compelled to write about, he explained. Because the train driver was a white South African, as Fugard is, he felt able to explore the theme of guilt in post-apartheid South Africa through this man, and to sort through the complicated feelings the woman's act engenders.
The United States's East Coast premiere of Fugard's important new play, "The Train Driver," begins on October 27 at New Haven's Long Wharf Theatre. Tony Award-nominated actor Harry Groener plays the train driver. Siimon, a mysterious gravedigger he encounters, who helps him, is played by Drama Desk Award- winner Anthony Chisholm. The play runs through November 21. For tickets and more information, visit the Theatre's website.
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