Athol Fugard

Humanitas Visiting Professorship in Drama (2010-2011)

The Humanitas Visiting Professorship in Drama brings playwrights, actors, and directors to share their craft and explore the rich thought-provoking field of the theatre.

The Visiting Professorship in Drama is hosted by Brasenose College, Oxford. During the years 2010-2013 the professorship was generously supported by Eric Abraham. From 2014 onwards it has been made possible by the generous support of André Hoffmann.

Athol Fugard is a South African playwright and novelist.

Identified by Time Magazine as “the greatest active playwright in the English speaking world” Athol Fugard is known for his deeply rooted and controversial anti-apartheid dramas.

Raised in Port Elizabeth since the age of three, Fugard deems himself the mongrel son of an English speaking father of Polish/Irish descent and an Afrikaner mother. Before becoming a playwright, young Fugard traveled through Africa, worked on a merchant ship, and served as a clerk in the pass-law court where he witnessed, first-hand, the extremities of Apartheid.

As a playwright, Fugard has come into much conflict and controversy. He has been subjected to government surveillance, restricted in his play development and travel by the South African government, and has been able to collaborate with several native, black South Africans to create confrontational and necessary theatre about the curse and price of apartheid both in South Africa and abroad.