When Roger Mortimer and Debrorah Edgington's production of Athol Fugard's My Children! My Africa! opened at The Tristan Bates Theatre in April this year, it was greeted with universal and unqualified praise. It also picked up four Off West End Nominations, which included one for each member of the cast. This summer it transfers to Trafalgar Studios for a full four week run.
Set in the South Africa of 1984 - the fourth decade of apartheid, the play tells the story of Thami, a young and brilliant black man as two opposing forces struggle for his soul. His teacher insists that education, even the inferior "Bantu" education he is forced to teach, is the way to liberation. But Thami has begun to listen to angrier voices... ...
Tony, Evening Standard and Writers' Circle Award-winner
Athol Fugard is one of the defining voices of South Africa during apartheid. He is best known for Master Harold and the Boys, Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The Road to Mecca. My Children! My Africa! was first staged in London at the National Theatre in 1990; this is its first professional production in London since.
Fugard himself has said of the play: "Should violence be met with violence? Or is there an alternative? The play is actually about my internal debate, at the end of which I found myself believing that putting words on paper is a valid form of action. You can throw stones, petrol bombs and molotov cocktails as hard as you like at those armoured cars, but you're not going to do much damage. Words can do much, much more than that. Words can get inside those armoured cars. Words can get inside the heads of the people inside those armoured cars."
Roger Mortimer studied theatre with Marina Carr and
Tim Crouch at the Lir Academy, part of Trinity College Dublin, and elsewhere with
Simon Stephens and
David Eldridge. He has written several plays, which have won several competitions and been performed as far afield as Warsaw, Pittsburgh and Buenos Aires. He also studied directing with Anthony Clark at East 15, and directed his own first play, Why Don't You Just Sing Jazz?, on the last night of the Grimeborn Festival of Alternative Opera at the Arcola Theatre in 2009 to great acclaim. He is the founder of Two Sheds Theatre Company, for which he also produces, and co-founder of opera company Opera in Colour. Last year his highly acclaimed production of Torben Betts' Muswell Hill opened at The White Bear and has recently enjoyed a successful transfer to The Park Theatre in Finsbury Park.
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