The Shadow of the Hummingbird

"The greatest active playwright in the English-speaking world."--Time

"If there is a more urgent and indispensable playwright in world theater than South Africa's Athol Fugard, I don't know who it could be."--Newsweek

"Athol Fugard can say more with a single line than most playwrights convey in an entire script."--Variety

Legendary theatre artist Athol Fugard returns to the stage for the first time in fifteen years in this, his latest work. The Shadow of the Hummingbird tells the story of an ailing man in his eighties and the afternoon spent with his ten year-old grandson. In a charming meditation on the beauty and transience of the world around us, Fugard continues to mine the depths of the human spirit with profound empathy and heart. The text of the play includes an introductory Prelude by Paula Fourie with extracts from Fugard's unpublished notebooks.

Athol Fugard has been working in the theater as a playwright, director, and actor for more than fifty years. In 2011, he received a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, and he was the inaugural Humanitas Visiting Professor of Drama at Oxford University. His plays include Blood Knot, Boesman and Lena, Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act, Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, 'Master Harold' . . . and the Boys, The Road to Mecca, My Children! My Africa! and The Blue Iris.



About the Author
Athol Fugard was born on June 11, 1932, in Middelburg, Great Karoo, Cape Province, South Africa. He has written close to fifty plays, as well as four books and several screenplays. His plays include Blood Knot (1961); Boseman and Lena (1969); "Master Harold"...and the boys (1982); The Road to Mecca (1984) and My Children! My Africa! (1989). Many of his works were turned into films: Tsotsi, based on his 1980 novel, won the 2005 Academy Award for best foreign language film. His work spans the period of apartheid in South Africa (imposed in 1948), through the first democratic elections (April 27, 1994), when Nelson Mandela became president, and into the aftermath of the present day. South Africa's best-known playwright, and one of the most performed playwrights in the world, at eighty, Fugard continues to direct and to write plays.