I am a big fan of Athol Fugard, the brilliant South African playwright. I’ve made a point to see some of his plays–I saw John Kani and Winston Ntshona both in the “The Island” (in London) and “Sizwe Bansi is Dead” (in Brooklyn). And as we know Kani is very much a product of Fugard’s schooling.  So I like the idea behind’s the new theater in Cape Town’s very white downtown, named for Fugard.

The New York Times correspondent Celia Dugger reports that the hope of Fugard and his backers with the theater is that “…. the transfiguring power of art will help change this breathtakingly beautiful, but still highly segregated, city by the sea.”  About time.

And for starters the theater will house Isango Portobello, “an all-black troupe of actors and singers mostly from nearby township of Khayelitsha, that has won critical acclaim across Europe.”  BTW, that’s the actors and crew who made the film, “uCarmen eKhayelitsha.”

Except, as Dugger writes, even Fugard can’t drive out Apartheid’s ghosts: ‘… The theater’s organizers acknowledge that they have a long way to go in building a multiracial audience. On a recent Wednesday evening, virtually every person at “The Magic Flute” was white, a fact regretfully noted by the theatergoers themselves.’

— Sean Jacobs