A Place with the Pigs: Athol Fugard' s Afrikaner Parable

Abstract

In a span of three years, Athol Fugard directed the world premieres of his two most recent dramas at the Yale Repertory Theatre: in 1984 he staged The Road to Mecca, and in 1987 he produced and acted in A Place with the Pigs. Mecca has been extraordinarily well received; after being performed at Yale, it played at Britain's National Theatre in 1985, atthe Charleston, South Carolina Spoleto Festival in 1987, and on Broadway in 1988. As the fourth major New York production of the decade, the success of Mecca confirmed, in the words of one critic, Fugard's "standing as the greatest active playwright in the Englishspealdng world ."