‘Trinity is elusive and flesh has scars’: an interview with Athol Fugard

What is it about?

ABSTRACT: This article and interview explores concepts of flesh and trinity in the playwriting of Athol Fugard, contextualized against the broad themes of pain, mortality, suffering, waiting and indeterminacy, and draws attention to an intellectual genealogy linking Heraclitus, Beckett, Fugard and Sophocles.

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Why is it important?

Athol Fugard has achieved pre-eminence as a theatre director, playwright and actor but the immediate occasion for this interview arose because we share the connection to a region, the eastern Cape province of South Africa where we both were born and have lived the better part of our lives. So when Fugard says he is a regional writer it immediately places us on the same page. We share the politics, the issues, the despair but above all a deep love for the place we come from. Where we differ is age, 25 years, and so I was curious to know his attitude towards mortality, death and departure from the physical body. Replying to my inquiries Fugard revealed that he has possibly written his last play and has now turned his hand to writing a novel. The manuscript, a work in progress, lay on the desk. Appropriately the title turns out to be Dry Remains – the residue after life leaves the body. This could have been a heavy topic but it wasn’t. The atmosphere was light in spite of an old man’s preoccupation with death and what is not apparent here, on the printed page, are the laughter and the silences that we shared during the course of our conversation.