Description:
A moving, personal portrayal of the conflicts, fears, and hopes that reshaped the political landscape of South Africa
Set in a traveling amusement park's temporary encampment on the outskirts of a small town, Playland charts the unlikely relationship between a white man recently released from military service and a Black man who works as the carnival's night watchman. In the course of the long New Year's Eve they spend together which marks the transition from the '80s to the '90s, they are forced to confront not only their long-held racial animosities, but the soul-searching secrets they share.
Also included in this volume is A Place with the Pigs, Fugard's personal parable based on the true story of Pavel Ivanovich Navrotsky, a deserter from the Soviet army who spent the forty-one years of his self-imposed exile in a pigsty.
Brief description:
Athol Fugard (1932-2025) worked in the theater as a playwright, director and actor for more than fifty years. His plays include Blood Knot, Boesman and Lena, "Master Harold"... and the boys, The Road to Mecca, My Children! My Africa!, Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act and Valley Song.
Review Quotes:
If there is a more urgent and indespensable playwright in world theatre, I don't know who it could be.
--Jack Kroll, Newsweek