In many ways on Tuesday, Athol Fugard was home. The illustrious playwright, known for his works Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and Master Harold and the Boys, among others, returned to Long Wharf Theatre for the third consecutive year with his newest play, The Train Driver.
The staff huddled up at first rehearsal, listening to Artistic Director Gordon Edelstein talk about a play Fugard has said is the most important in his 50 year career. “Categories are dangerous sometimes but in some ways you can divide the world between people who believe it is everyone for themselves, individualism, and those that believe we are all connected. To me, this is a play about the ways in which we are all connected,” Edelstein said.
Edelstein pointed around the room, mentioning that the people at Long Wharf Theatre are connected to one another through their work, through good times spent at Sullivan’s, through myriad ways. “But you are also connected to the toll taker on 95, to the waitress whose name you don’t know, you are connected with everyone,” he said.
Fugard said his play is a response to the lingering racial problems in post-apartheid South Africa. “We realized that there are a lot of open wounds and sores and, you know, a huge, huge legacy of bitterness, anger and ongoing prejudice and we tried to deal with that in South Africa by instituting something called the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation. You know that was a very remarkable effort. But it missed the point completely. The point is that redemption and the act of forgiveness, for that is what lies at the core of it, those are mysteries that you can’t legislate into existence. Those are events inside the human heart that defy any attempt at trying to sort them out. It is an act of grace on whatever sort of god you believe in,” Fugard said.