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.
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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.
The Island is Robben Island, South Africa's notorious prison, where John and Winston are political prisoners and cellmates. After absurdly grueling days laboring under the sun, they return to their dark cell to rehearse a makeshift performance of Sophocles' play Antigone.Winston takes the part of young Antigone, who defies the laws of the state for the sake of her conscience. Note that spot 4D20, corresponding to a CpG island 5' to the Argef7 gene, shows greatly reduced intensity (increased methylation) in both D100 and G100 cells compared to control (Figure 4C, left), while the spot 4G11, corresponding to a CpG island 5' to the Gm967 gene, displayed decreased intensity in both G100 and H100 cells (Figure 4C, right).
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. Dealscan database manual. 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. Allen bradley plc software free for windows 7. 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.
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Athol Fugard Written Works
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.