WORLD BRIDGE BLOG

The second most widely produced playwright in the world after William Shakespeare is South African Athol Fugard, who indeed has been described as the “greatest playwright writing in English since Shakespeare.” Those present on June 9 witnessed the power of his craft and his riveting personal presence at the a staged reading of “Have You Seen Us,” Mr. Fugard’s first play set in the United States. The performance at Washington D.C.’s Folger Theatre was sponsored by The Faith and Politics Institute, and featured Refugees International’s Vice Chair, Sam Waterston in the lead role. We experienced why drama is “one of the strongest forces in the world to provoke discussion and create community”, in the words of Director Gordon Edelstein, from the Long Wharf theater.

Almost all major theater cities in the world will have at least one Fugard play staged every year. His numerous bombshell plays are now a part of the international canon the Folger Theater playbill states at the Washington premier. They illuminate stories of the poison of prejudice and intolerance during the ugly apartheid era when they had inestimable impact. Still do. He was never censored but sometimes banned as a result! They often described his own, as well as others’, evil acts directed at “lessers” such as his black childhood friends he attacked with vicious anger, portrayed in gut wrenching “Master Harold and the Boys.” Any of us who have sat under his spell can testify theater can change the world one relationship at a time.

This is especially an important prophetic message for those who seek to be the voice of the voiceless like those of us at Refugees International, for we are empowered by its messages.

The play begins in a storefront sandwich shop with Sam Waterston, playing the male lead Henry Parsons, a hate and drink-addicted South African expatriate to Southern California. Henry explains how seeming insignificant “coincidences have impact” as a fateful little finger appears to push the first domino that results in life changes. And suddenly the theater audience has the veil pulled back on our own “seething resentments, hurts and rejections” as Sam’s Henry probes our deepest subconscious fears of and offenses against others by trading barbed verbal attacks and cursing volleys with the illegal alien Mexican waitress (Adela played by Liza Colon-Zayas), and then again offends later an elderly Jewish couple asking for "chicken soup with matzos balls", with whom he has had a previous soul shaking encounter, (Solly and Rachel played by David Marguilies and Elaine Kussack).

The poultice drawing out the emotions of actors’ and audience becomes a lanced boil of “understanding what lives are all about” touching on Christmas/holiday loneliness, racial and religious conflicts and hatreds, impact of revolutions, fear of death, female bonding, alcoholism, family separation, embarrassment of national origins and corporate crimes, cross generational guilt, suspicion of refugees; and whatever each participant has had brought to the conscious mind! Tearful squirming, uncomfortable stuff. And this was supposed to be fun and redemptive!?

Well, under the hand and spell of Athol Fugard and skilled actors, an emphatic yes!

The decades long circle was drawn to completion since this blogger was first bowled over by the riveting power of Mr. Fugard. I was part of a congressional delegation in 1982 to desperate cloud covered apartheid South Africa when we first were acquainted. Three senators (Hatfield, Eagleton and Laxalt) and twelve staff heard him say, “I have been so discouraged about race, indeed human, relations in the past months I have been suffering writer's block and am fearful of what I might do to myself. But it came to me as in a dream that the central transaction of the universe is one person caring for another, loving another, healing another…so I have determined to travel all over this fearful country visiting schools, universities, community centers, and houses of worship to say, ‘if you are white and don’t have a black friend find one, if you are an Afrikaans Nationalist and don’t have a Communist friend get one, if you are an ANC member and don’t have white political counterpart embrace one, and practice the central transaction of the universe each person caring for one different from him/herself’.”

And of course many other well-known South Africans embraced and preached and practiced the mantra. In the view of many his vision played a major part in the healing of those seen in long patient purposeful lines, black, white and so called colored together, who voted Nelson Mandela the first majority president. The whole world was thrilled by what Archbishop Tutu described as the “rainbow people of God…the rainbow nation”!

NPR’s Nina Totenberg chaired the moving post-reading discussion time, with great skill and good humor. It was a challenge worthy of her journalistic gifts after the gasping but healing end of the play, when Henry had “something stir inside.”. He declares, “the monster has a name…PREJUDICE…I’m rotten with it. Please forgive me (to the Jewish Solo). You were ugly…now you are beautiful. I hated you…I’m sorry.” And Solly responds, “I forgive you. Then God will also forgive you.”. And Henry observes, “The journey from hate to love was the shortest one I ever made…all my dominoes are down.”.

One is left with hope that in fact even a single healed relationship is the microcosm that can turn the universe of hate around. Even with the reality of the unhealed amongst us lingers the audience stood with applause. Unfinished is a broken transborder relationship with Adela, for she has presumably fled back home to the bosom of her family in her poor village because it is “too difficult to bear the slings and arrows of abuse in America,”, actress Liza Colon-Zayas points out during the discussion. Henry cannot therefore bridge the gulf with her when he returns to find the sandwich shop closed and shuttered and Adela "disappeared".

While out of their characters each of the actors admitted along with all of us, “we are not as we appear, and when off the stage we are convicted by these lines just as you in the theater seats are challenged.”

And then in emotional conclusion Mr. Fugard declared, “What the stage is, is one person dealing with the possibility of personal redemption…it is the one sustaining act of faith in my life.” Was there a dry eye in the venerable miniature “Globe” Folger Theater? I doubt it. Shakespeare would have been pleased.

What a challenge was laid down for those of us confronted by Fugard and his muse even beyond, but including, the work in healing uncivil broken relations in our homes, work places, houses of worship and places of political discussions.

We were inexorably called again to reach out to the countless poorest of the poor, desperately displaced and disenfranchised in our midst to answer their question, “Have you seen us?” Do you care? Will you be changed? Will you effect change?

Tom Getman is a Member Emeritus of the Refugees International Board of Directors.