Appointments

Above: Susan Hilferty with Playwright Athol Fugard.

By Susan Hilferty, Costume Designer for "Master Harold"...and the Boys

Remarks prepared for Athol Fugard’s memorial service at his home in Stellenbosch, South Africa on March 21, 2025.

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When I accepted Athol’s medal at the Theater Hall of Fame in New York City—instead of a speech—he asked me to read out the titles of all of his plays.

No more. No less.

I thought about doing that again today, but instead, I am sharing a more personal response.

Those of you who knew him well would have heard him use the word “appointments.”

He had appointments with different seeds that he knew would come up in his writing sometime in the future. He wrote every day and was always looking ahead.

Some of his plays were inspired by newspaper articles or photos that he had tucked away—saving them for the right moment—for that “appointment.”

One was a haunting photograph of the body of a Black man being lowered into a mass grave by a white soldier in the South African Border War. That turned into Playland.

He also held on to a newspaper article which recounted the story of a Russian World War II deserter who spent four decades avoiding punishment by hiding out in a pigsty, leaving only once to take an evening walk dressed as a woman. That became A Place with the Pigs.

Athol gave me the photo of Miss Helen and her friend Jill Wenman that inspired The Road to Mecca. On the back he wrote: “This is the photograph that generated the play. Jill gave it to me. The moment I saw it, saw the love, trust, and fun between the two women, I knew I had it. Had my story. Look after it.”

As Athol’s “appointments” come to life on the stage, I am always very moved by his connection to the mundane, the quotidian, and how he makes humble objects sacred. For me, Athol’s plays hold “epiphanies” that are connected to a simple element or object, seemingly benign, but whose metaphorical power somehow shakes the entire world of the play.

My first memories of Athol are wreathed in smoke—purportedly from a pipe given to him by Samuel Beckett. The objects embedded in Athol’s plays never have the same lineage as a “Beckett” pipe—they have much simpler origins—but always with the possibility of emotionally shattering consequences.

The first of Athol‘s plays that I saw was Sizwe Banzi Is Dead at the Royal Court in London. Years later, talking to John Kani and Athol about that play which they wrote with Winston Ntshona, we laughed at Winston and John’s desire to write a play that would “change the world.” Athol kept coming back to them and saying, “I saw a photograph in a store window of a Black man—with a pipe in one hand and a cigarette in the other—with a big smile on his face. Let’s write about that.” And with that appointment, Athol, John, and Winston wrote a seemingly small play. But with a nuclear power that did change the world.

That evening seeing Sizwe in the theater I remember being transported, even changed, in a way that I had never felt before. When the play ended, I sat there stunned, believing that I had been transported to South Africa and back again. How could that be? Looking at the stage, there was a blackboard, a desk, two chairs. But I was different.

I often talk about seeing Sizwe as a moment that changed my entire life. Five years after that performance, I started working with Athol when he came to direct A Lesson From Aloes in my final year of graduate school. Aloes began our 40-year collaboration—which included so many “Fugardian” places, people, words, and objects-—possibly the greatest gift to my life as an artist.

Always special for me is the “humble potato” in The Road to Mecca, which Marius Weyers brilliantly presents as the epitome of joy, fulfillment and simplicity, but then uses to chastise Miss Helen when he asserts that her garden has given way to other pastimes and interests—ones that he discourages.

“Feast your eyes on that, Miss Barlow! A genuine Sneeuberg potato! A pinch of salt and you’ve got a meal, and if you want to be extravagant, add a little butter and you have indeed got a feast!...

We pride ourselves in these parts on knowing what a potato really is. And there you have it. Art Appel The Apple of the Earth, as we Afrikaners say...

In the old days Miss Helen used to have a very fine vegetable garden of her own out there. But as you can see the humble potato has been crowded out by other things. I don’t think there is enough room left out there to grow a radish.”

In “Master Harold”…and the Boys, (where Athol had an appointment with his own self) a child’s toy—a kite—becomes a symbol of innocence caught in the complicated notion of freedom. In this beautiful play, we understand the possibility of hope within a country so divided. Athol’s genius has both Sam and Hally tell their story about the origin of this kite, so that we see the huge complexity of their lives—but also understand and appreciate the differences.

It’s impossible not to hear Athol in these words when Mr. Min My Children! My Africa! holds out his hands with a dictionary in one and a stone in the other, and says to us:

“If you put these two on a scale, I think you would find that they weigh just about the same.

But in this hand I am holding the whole English language. This [stone] is just one word in that language.

Twenty six letters, sixty thousand words. The greatest souls the world has ever known were able to open the floodgates of their ecstasy, their despair, their joy! … with the words in this little book! Are you tempted? I was.”

A few days after hearing the news of Athol’s passing, I went to my studio, where a lot of shifting of my library had been happening. A small piece of paper had fallen out of one of the books and an assistant had left it on my table. It is a note from the front desk of a hotel back in 1988—back when you got notes.

It says, “Athol phoned. Will call you later”. So I know I have my next appointment.

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“Master Harold”...and the Boys

APR 8 – MAY 10, 2026
GIL CATES THEATER

Written by Athol Fugard
Directed by Emily Mann & Tarell Alvin McCraney
Featuring Ben Beatty, Nyasha Hatendi & John Kani

Step into the charged atmosphere of a 1950s South African tea shop in Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold”…and the Boys, a gripping, deeply personal drama that unflinchingly confronts the realities of race, power, and betrayal. On a rainy afternoon, Hally, a white teenager, passes the time with Sam and Willie, two Black waiters who have helped raise him by filling the gaps of a broken home with warmth, wisdom, and laughter. But as the day unfolds, playful memories give way to painful truths, and a single moment threatens to shatter the fragile bond between them forever.

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