Athol Fugard The Island Pdf

Another comparison is Jean Genet's Death Watch. The premiere was in the Space Theatre in Cape Town with Fugard directing Kani and Ntshona. The title was given as Die Hodoshe Span since any references to Robben Island prison camp would be unacceptable to the government. Commerce Commission New Zealand to leave voice and text MTAS regulated. Opportunity still exists for Kiwi telcos to ramp up voice costs, while texts are likely to be re-examined in the coming years. This chapter investigates The Island, devised jointly by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona. It enquires into how the play, when witnessed in performance, seems to be both an arena of real historical forces coursing across the stage and yet, since the demise of apartheid, a ritual re-enactment. These two versions of itself are coordinated in the play-within-the-play, the Antigone. The Island study guide contains a biography of Athol Fugard, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. About The Island The Island Summary. Disaster risk governance is concerned with how institutions change in response to perturbations or, conversely, are able to remain static for long periods of time. In Montserrat, the volcanic eruption in 1995 produced unprecedented challenges for both local government authorities and the UK Government. The sharp and sustained rise in the level of volcanic risk combined with an inadequate.

The Island is a play written by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona.

The apartheid-era drama, inspired by a true story, is set in an unnamed prison clearly based on South Africa's notorious Robben Island prison, where Nelson Mandela was held for twenty-seven years. It focuses on two cellmates, one whose successful appeal means that his release draws near and one who must remain in prison for many years to come. They spend their days performing futile physical labor and nights rehearsing in their cell for a performance of Sophocles' Antigone in front of the other prisoners. One takes the part of Antigone, who defies the laws of the state to bury her brother, and the other takes the part of her uncle Creon, who sentences her to die for her crime of conscience. The play draws parallels between Antigone's situation and the situation of black political prisoners. Tensions arise as the performance approaches, especially when one of the prisoners learns that he has won an early release and the men's friendship is tested.

Structure[edit]

The play has four scenes. It opens with a lengthy mimed sequence in which John and Winston, two cell mates imprisoned on Robben Island, shovel sand in the scorching heat, dumping the sand at the feet of the other man, so that the pile of the sand never diminishes. This is designed to exhaust the body and the morale of the prisoners. Later scenes include a play within a play, as Winston and John perform a condensed two-person version of Antigone by Sophocles.

History[edit]

The play was first performed in Cape Town, at a theatre called The Space, in July 1973. In order to evade the draconian censorship in South Africa at the time (plays dealing with prison conditions, etc., were prohibited), the play premiered under the title, Die Hodoshe Span. It was next staged at the Royal Court Theatre in London, with John Kani and Winston Ntshona portraying John and Winston respectively. The Broadway production, presented in repertory with Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, opened on November 24, 1974 at the Edison Theatre, where it ran for 52 performances.

Fugard The Island Full Text Movie

In an unusual move, Kani and Ntshona were named co-Tony Award nominees (and eventual co-winners) for Best Actor in a Play for both The Island and Sizwe Banzi Is Dead.

Over the next thirty years, Kani and Ntshona periodically performed in productions of the play. Notable among them were the Royal National Theatre in 2000 [1], reported at the time as their final production, although they went on to star at the Old Vic in 2002 [2] and the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2004 [3].

Plot[edit]

John and Winston share a prison cell on an unnamed Island. After another day of hard labor and having been forced to run while shackled and then beaten, they return to their cell. They tend each other's wounds, share memories of times at the beach and rehearse for the prisoner-performed concert which is imminent. They are going to perform a scene from an abridged version of Antigone by Sophocles. John will play Creon and Winston will play Antigone.

When he sees himself in his costume, Winston tries to pull out of playing a female role, fearing he will be humiliated. John is called to the governor's office. He returns with news that his appeal was successful and his ten-year sentence has been commuted to three years: he will be free in three months. Winston is happy for him. As they imagine what leaving prison and returning home will be like, Winston begins to unravel. He doubts why he ever made a stand against the regime, why he even exists. Having said it, he experiences a catharsis, and accepts that he must endure.

The final scene is their performance of Antigone. After John-as-Creon sentences Winston-as-Antigone to be walled up in a cave for having defied him and done her duty towards her dead brother, Winston pulls off Antigone's wig and yells 'Gods of Our Fathers! My Land! My Home! Time waits no longer. I go now to my living death, because I honored those things to which honor belongs'. The final image is of John and Winston, chained together once more, running hard as the siren wails.

Characters[edit]

• John has been imprisoned for belonging to a banned organization.
• Winston, we find out later was imprisoned for burning his passbook in front of the police. This was a serious crime, as the passbook was used to segregate and control the South African people.
• Hodoshe, an unseen character: he is referred to and represented by the sound of a prison whistle. He is a symbol of the apartheid state and racist rule. The literal translation for Hodoshe is 'carrion fly' (as mentioned in the play), a large green fly.

Fugard The Island Full Text Book

Themes[edit]

The Coat By Athol Fugard

• Obedience and civil disobedience
• Brotherhood
• Freedom – bodily freedom, freedom of conscience and freedom of the mind
• Memory, imagination, and the transformative power of performance

Language[edit]

Although the play is in English, Afrikaans and Xhosa words are spoken as well.

Broadway awards and nominations[edit]

• Tony Award for Best Play (co-nominee with Sizwe Banzi)
• Tony Award for Best Actor in Play (Kani and Ntshona, winners)
• Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play (nominee)
• Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play (Kani and Ntshona, co-nominees)
• Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Play (nominee)
• Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Foreign Play (co-nominee with Sizwe Banzi)

External links[edit]

Inspired by a true story during the time of apartheid in South Africa, The Islandis a play that Athol Fugard co-wrote with two other playwrights, John Kani and Winston Ntshona. The three men met when they were members of a drama group called the Serpent Players, a group comprising of amateur actors who all had day jobs to go to during the working week. After work they would attend workshops, with play rehearsals taking place on the weekends. The men hit it off immediately and as they became more well-known, they gained the confidence to write their own material instead of performing other people's.

The play is set in an un-named prison widely believed to be Robben Island, whose most famous prisoner, Nelson Mandela, was kept captive there for twenty seven years. The two protagonists of the play, John and Winston, are prisoners; one has recently successfully appealed his sentence and is soon to be released, the other who is going to stay in prison for the foreseeable future at least. The men are part of a theater program in the jail and they are shortly to perform Sophocles' play Antigone for the other prisoners. One man is going to play Antigone, the other, her Uncle Creon, who sentences her to death for giving her brother a proper burial, which is against the law, but which her conscience tells her she must do.

Antigone's situation is used as a parallel with the situation of the men in the prison because the majority of them are imprisoned for politically-motivated crime that are also a calling of their conscience.

The play was first performed in Cape Town but was given a different title so that it would not fall foul of the government's censorship laws by shining a light on the political prisoners incarcerated on Robben Island. At the time any play that focused on prisons or the way in which prisoners were kept and forced to undertake hard labor were banned. The play was successful and soon earned a run in London's theater district, premiering at the Royal Court Theater in Haymarket. John Kani and Winston Ntshona starred in the London production, playing their namesake characters. The production on Broadway opened a year later and earned Tony Awards for both Kani and Ntshona.

Athol Fugard, although not a performer in this play, is nonetheless a respected actor, but he is better known as both a writer and a director. The majority of his work focuses on the injustices of apartheid and the racial discrimination Fugard experienced whilst growing up in South Africa. Because of his outspokenness about apartheid, and his opposition to it, he became restricted by the government and he was frequently surveilled by the military police. He began to produce his work outside South Africa so that he did not have to abide by the constraints that were placed upon productions staged within the country.

In 2011, Fugard was awarded the Speical Lifetime Award by the Tony Awards; in 2005 his novel Tsoti was adapted for the big screen, and received an Academy Award.