About the Play:

HARD TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

Blood Knot has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Male/Male Scenes.

Hello and Goodbye has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, and Female/Male Scenes.

The volume Blood Knot and Other Plays contains the three Port Elizabeth plays which established Athol Fugard's international reputation. In Blood Knot two half-brothers, one of whom appears black and one of whom appears white, live together in a shack outside South Africa's Port Elizabeth, enacting daily routines and games that reveal their dangerous co-dependence.

Blood Knot is a full-length drama about two half-brothers who share a one-room shack near Port Elizabeth, South Africa: Zachariah is dark-skinned and Morris, light-skinned. They share the same mother but find their differences lead them to a common bond as brothers and men. Saving to buy a farm where they may retire Morris is the "slave", cooking and cleaning while Zach earns money for them both. When Morrie joins a lonely hearts club on his brother's behalf, they find themselves awaiting the visit of a White woman who will never arrive. (Cast: 2 male)

Blood Knot premiered in 1961 in Johannesburg and marked the first time a black man and a white man appeared together on stage in South Africa. It was banned in Athol Fugard's homeland after just one performance. When Blood Knot was produced in England, the South African government withdrew his passport for four years. This stinging indictment of the South Africa's racism starred James Earl Jones when it was staged off Broadway three years later. It debuted on Broadway in 1985 in a production starring Athol Fugard and was nominated for a Tony Award for best play.

What people say:

"Best play of the year." — The New York Times

Boesman and Lena is a full-length drama about two Black scavengers emerge from the underbrush loaded with their total possessions: the makings of a shack and a battery of pots and pans but nothing to cook in them. They are the dregs of society, the stepped upon, the spat upon. (Cast: 1 female, 2 male)

What people say:

"The play is carefully structured as a dance first with Lena's solo, then with a pas de deux , then with Boesman's verbal self expression. An old man stumbles on the two Hottentots, and becomes the physical catalyst of their relationship, precipitating a crisis and a credible resolution." — Hollywood Reporter

"Athol Fugard, the South African playwright, has written some fine plays, but certainly none better than the amazing Boesman and Lena, which is great; absolutely superb." — ABC TV

Hello and Goodbye is a deceptively simple full-length drama about a South African who is visited by his sister after a very long absence. Yes, he says; he and Dad have been getting along well enough, but no, she can't talk to him because he's asleep in the next room. Sister has really come home because she believes Dad has secreted 500 Pounds somewhere in the house, and she wants to make a deal with her brother; he can keep the house as his part of the heritage, if he'll let her find and keep the money. Their memories work back and forth, and the brother tries to keep passions down so that father will not be awakened. But in the end the terrible truths of this family drama develop into an image of the disastrous plight of the entire nation of South Africa. Father is dead; the only inheritance they have is the land, the squalor and the misery. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops. (Cast: 1 female, 1 male)

About the Playwright:

Athol Fugard is an internationally acclaimed South African playwright whose work deals with the political and social upheaval of the apartheid system in South Africa. He was educated at the University of Cape Town, and frequently directs and performs in his plays which are regularly performed in theatres in South Africa, Great Britain, the United States and around the world. Several of his plays have been adapted for the screen and his novel Tsotsi was made into a film that won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2011 he received a special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre.