Exits and Entrances: Fugard on theatre in South Africa and the other apartheid

Resumen

A new play by Athol Fugard, an author of unequivocally political but universally appealing works, shows a deliberate break with what have always been his thematic concerns of the past. The dejà vu issues of racial strife that have been the source of inspiration for him as for many South African writers have been laid to rest. Maintaining its South African character via language and combined culturalliterary allusion Exits and Entrances explores the world of the stage via a delicate technique of metatheatre as well as biography, autobiography and the question of the other apartheid that has seldom been addressed in South African literature: that barrier between Afrikaners and Englishmen. The two-hander containing all the emblematic traits of Fugard’s work is served not only as an autobiography of the artist as a young man, but also provides biographical insights into the lives of two larger-than-life South African personalities: André Huguenet and Eugène Marais. By redeeming these two Afrikaner personalities Fugard appears to reconcile his Afrikaner half with those compatriots he was accused of having betrayed via his political plays.