The Fountain Theatre continues its unique relationship with one of the world's greatest living playwrights, Athol Fugard, with the West Coast premiere of Coming Home. Stephen Sachs directs Matthew Elam, Deidrie Henry, Noah Murtadha, Thomas Silcott, Timothy Taylor and Adolphus Ward in Fugard's newest work, which opens June 20 and continues through August 29. Low-priced previews begin June 13.
Ten years after she left to pursue a singing career in Cape Town, Veronica Jonkers comes home to her beloved grandfather's farm and the village of her youth. Carrying a heart filled with disappointment, she returns determined to plant the seeds of a new life for her young son.
"It's a play that is full of the humanity and wisdom we've come to expect from Athol Fugard's work." says Sachs. "It is achingly beautiful, exposing life in contemporary South Africa through the unforgettable love of a mother and her child, and the promise of a new world."
Coming Home is Fugard's first sequel. It continues the story he began in his acclaimed 1995 Valley Song, in which Veronica left her Oupa's farm to follow her dreams in the big city. That, in turn, was Fugard's first post-apartheid play.
"[Valley Song] expressed my - and I think the majority of South Africans' - hope that, with the fall of apartheid, we had entered a new world and that it was going to be a different story from now on," said Fugard in an interview. "Well, the truth is, as the years have passed, I have seen the dreams start to wither. It just seemed to me, at this moment in South Africa's history, I needed to follow up and take a look at that big dream that we had."
In Coming Home, Fugard confronts the hard truths of contemporary life in his homeland while also celebrating the unquenchable power of hope. All of the characters are based on people that have touched Fugard's life in his hometown of Nieu Bethesda in the Karoo region of South Africa.
"I am by nature an optimist, and it's very hard for me to despair of any situation," he explained. "I always believe that there is something floating around in that ocean of wreckage to which we can cling and maybe survive."
Athol Fugard is a South African playwright, actor, and director whose scripts have earned countless accolades, including the Academy Award, Obie Award, and Tony Award. One of the first white playwrights to collaborate with black actors and workers, Fugard writes of the frustrations of life in contemporary South Africa and of overcoming the psychological barriers created by apartheid. Some of his works, such as Blood Knot, were initially banned in South Africa. Widely acclaimed, his plays include Boesman and Lena (Obie Award, Best Foreign Play), Sizwe Bansi Is Dead (Tony Award, Best Play), A Lesson from Aloes (New York Drama Critics Circle Award, Best Play), the semiautobiographical Master Harold... and the Boys (Writers Guild Award, Outstanding Achievement) and The Road to Mecca (New York Drama Critics Circle Citation, Best Foreign Play, London Evening Standard Award, Best Play). In his first two post-apartheid plays, Valley Song (1995) and The Captain's Tiger (1998), Fugard addressed more personal concerns, but in Sorrows and Rejoicings (2001) he focused on the complex racial dynamics of South Africa's new era. In 2005 his novel, Tsotsi (1980), was adapted for the screen, winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
The Fountain Theatre's special relationship with Athol Fugard began when co-founder/co-artistic director Stephen Sachs directed the Los Angeles premiere of Fugard's The Road to Mecca in 2000. Fugard was so impressed with the stellar production that he offered the company world premiere rights to an as-yet-unwritten new work. When Sachs directed that world premiere production for the Fountain in 2004, Exits and Entrances received recognition for Best Production and Best Director from both the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle (garnering a total of five awards) and the Ovations (receiving a total of three awards). Mr. Sachs went on to direct acclaimed regional productions of Exits and Entrances around the country, an Off-Broadway production at Primary Stages, and the UK premiere at the 2007 International Edinburgh Festival. The American premiere of Mr. Fugard's Victory at the Fountain in 2008, also directed by Stephen Sachs, was the recipient of two LADCC awards and four LA Weekly nominations, and was named "Best of 2008" by the Los Angeles Times. For the program of Victory, Athol Fugard wrote that he "considers The Fountain Theater his artistic home in the United States."
