by ATHOL FUGARD
directed by AMEERA CONRAD
To accompany our production of In Praise of Love, we’re thrilled to present a play by legendary playwright Athol Fugard.
CONTENT ADVICE: This production contains references to racism and apartheid.
Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard OIS was a South African playwright, novelist, actor and director. Widely regarded as South Africa’s greatest playwright, he published more than thirty plays. He is best known for his political and penetrating plays opposing the system of apartheid, some of which have been adapted to film. His novel Tsotsi was adapted as a film of the same name, which won an Academy Award in 2005. Three plays he wrote, and two plays he co-authored, were nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play.
His numerous plays include Blood Knot, Hello and Goodbye, Boesman and Lema, The Island, Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act, A Lesson from Aloes, “Master Harold”…and the Boys, The Road to Mecca and My Children! My Africa!.
He received many awards, honours and honorary degrees, including the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver from the government of South Africa and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. in 2011, he received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement in 2011.
Ameera Conrad (she/they) is a theatre maker from Cape Town, South Africa, and a current Associate Director for NT Connections, one of the visiting lecturers for Mountview’s MA Theatre for Community and Education. Ameera is the former Associate Artistic Director for 20 Stories High, and the former Associate Director for the Actors’ Touring Company, and LAMDA. Ameera has recently been named as one of the Mail and Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans for 2024.
She is an alumnus of the 2017 Lincoln Center Theater Director’s Lab, and a recipient of the Theatre Arts Admin Collective’s Emerging Theatre Director Bursary. They have won a Fleur du Cap Encore Award, Scotsman Fringe First Award, The Stage Edinburgh Award for The Fall. She has also won the Filipa Bragança award for best emerging solo performer at the Edinburgh Fringe (2019) and the Western Cape Department of Sports and Culture award for her contributions to theatre in South Africa (2018).
About OT Lunchtime Plays
Lunchtime Plays at the OT hark back to our origins over fifty years ago when a group of actors adopted a room above the Orange Tree pub, performing with scripts in hand and nothing but the daylight through the windows to light performances. Chairs were placed around the edge of the room creating an in-the-round space that remains at the heart of our work all these years later.
Cast
Jingi
Kai Luke Brummer
Marie
Kgalalelo Thakadu
Aniko
Luyanda Unathi Lewis-Nyawo
Lavrenti
Ery Nzaramba
Haemon
John Pfumojena