Clyde Fitch Report: When, in 1982, playwright Athol Fugard wrote his stunning — in the truest sense of the word, it stuns — Master Harold…and the Boys, the stench of apartheid still strongly held in South Africa. Among other implementations, there were such things as “whites only” benches. Then, in 1994, apartheid ended.
That’s to say: overt apartheid ended. While writing this response to the Signature Theatre’s revival of the play, where Fugard is one of the international playwrights regularly honored, I can’t attest to how the covert apartheid situation abides in South Africa. I’ve never traveled there.
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I’m kind of surprised that there aren’t any comments for this post, and as time grows closer to the due time I hope there are more. Because in light of what is happening in America right now, the discourse between people, political viewpoints, and even a racial tension, I think this play is important. I have not seen it, but hearing the description, it is a play that I would definitely take time to go see. There is a lot in this post so I am going to say somethings that spoke out to me the most: 1. It is this thing about overt and subvert racism, where once the overt (legal) racism had been abolished, the subvert became more and more fierce. This line in particular: “He progresses — if “progresses” could be the right verb in this context — from puerile boy to young man manifest with the bigotry of the society into which he was born.” And it is phrase “the manifest with the bigotry of the society into which he was born to” that really hits. I feel like that is exactly what microaggressions come from, a subvert act of racism that originates from the “bigotry of the society into which” He/she/they are born into. Microaggressions don’t necessarily mean a person is a racist, but says something about the society and culture we still life in: that the racism and bigotry of our history isn’t completely gone but still lies in the mass subvert consciousness of every person who was raised in the society, and I truly mean everyone. Minorities can be racist and bigots too, though that is a whole other debate of opinion of description that I don’t really want to write about now.
The video of the author also struck me, as it was of him talking about how words can do what a physical action against an armored vehicle can never do, and that is bringing a certain level of understanding and action/activism that damages the consciousness of the person operating that vehicle far better than violence. And as artist/persons of the theatre, I think it is important to remember that what we do, though seemingly trivial, could serve as an act of activism as long as a strive to connect to the people watching and dive deep into their consciousness and sub consciousness the message we want to spread.
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