1. Athol Fugard
Boesman and Lena
Lecturer: Dalene Labuschagne
March 2013

2. Important notice:
These slides form the basic framework for lectures.
They do not by any means cover the full content of
lecture presentations.
Additional reading, on which these lecture
presentations are based, is available on Edulink:
• Athol Fugard’s “Introduction” (1974);
• “Power, self, and other – the absurd in Boesman and
Lena,” by Craig W. McLuckie (1993).
Please ensure that you have read, and properly
understood, these articles.

3. About the playwright:
• Born 11 June 1932 in Middelburg
in the Karoo;
• Afrikaner mother, English-speaking
South African father from Irish
descent.
• Family moved to Port Elizabeth
when young Athol was three,
where he stayed for most of his
life.
• Studied philosophy and social
anthropology at UCT for three
years, left without completing
degree.
• Spent six months hitch-hiking up
Africa as far as Sudan, followed by
two years as a seaman in the Far
East.

4. • Became involved in
theatre after returning to
SA;
– Met actress, later author,
Sheila (neé Meiring) and
married in 1956;
– They founded a theater
company, the Circle
Players, in 1957, for which
they wrote most of the
material.

5. • In 1958 they move to
Johannesburg;
– Fugard finds a job as clerk in
Fordsburg Native Commissioner’s
Court;
– “During my six months in that
Court Room I saw more suffering
than I could cope with. I began to
understand how my country
functioned”.
• During this time he writes No
Good Friday, working with black
actors who had little or no stage
experience.

6. • Subsequently becomes a
stage manager for South
Africa's National Theatre
Organization and begins
writing plays in earnest.
– First real success was The
Blood Knot (1961), a play
about two South African
half-brothers, one black, the
other coloured but able to
pass for white.
• Leads to his passport being
withdrawn.

7. • Went on to gain
worldwide recognition
with many award-
winning plays such as:
– Hello and Goodbye (1965)
– Boesman and Lena (1969)
– Sizwe Banzi is Dead (1972)
– A Lesson From Aloes
(1978)
– Master Harold … and the
Boys (1982)
– My Children! My Africa!
(1989)

8. • intimate, personal portrayals
of tragic events in the lives of
two or three characters;
• often containing mixed casts
(black, white, and mixed-race
characters);
• all set against the difficult
social and political
environment of his native
South Africa.

9. • He writes in 1974:
“Like everyone else in this
country, black and white, my
horizons have shrunk, and will
continue to do so. Today’s future
barely includes tomorrow. At
times I see the situation
deteriorating still further, to the
point where even the thought of
tomorrow will be a luxury. I’m
trying to live and work in
preparation for that
eventuality.”

10. • Once apartheid was abolished, in
1994, and the long struggle for
racial equality in the troubled
country began a new chapter, his
career continued to flourish;
– With the help of five young South
African women, he assembled a
collaborative piece called My Life
(1996),
• their experiences, desires, and fears
about the new South Africa.
– followed by Valley Song (1996),
• autobiographical play that extends
well beyond political boundaries.
– And the “forgotten” novel, Tsotsi,
which forms the source of the
award-winning 2005 film.

11. Athol Fugard celebrated his 80th birthday last
year.

12. Boesman and Lena: context
• Fugard first began working on
Boesman and Lena in October
1967:
– Notebook entry 2/10/67
• “Boesman – self-hatred and shame,
focused on Lena…
Love. Desertion.”
• First presented in South Africa in
1969:
– “…I had serious misgivings about
running into trouble with our
Censorship Board…I was lucky”.

13. Historical context – South Africa during the
1960’s:
1960:
• 21 March – Sharpeville massacre: Police shoot
and kill an estimated 69 people who were part of
a demonstration against pass laws, in which all
black South Africans needed a passbook to be
able to travel about their own land;
• 24 March - All public meetings more than 12
people are banned, later reduced to meetings
greater than 3 people;
• 8 April - The government bans the African
National Congress and the Pan Africanist
Congress;
• 5 October - whites vote in a referendum, to sever
South Africa’s last links with the British monarchy
and become a republic.

14. 1961:
• 15 March - South Africa withdraws from the
Commonwealth;
• 31 May - South Africa becomes a republic; C. R. Swart
becomes the first State President;
• 16 December - The ANC launches its armed struggle with
the formation of the Umkhonto we Sizwe.
1962:
• January – Nelson Mandela leaves SA for military training
with the Umkhonto we Sizwe;
• 5 August – Mandela is arrested after the CIA tipped off the
police;
• October – Lillian Ngoyi is banned for 10 years, confining her
to Orlando Township and forbidding her to attend any
gatherings;
• 13 October – Helen Joseph becomes the first person to be
placed under house arrest under the Sabotage Act;
• 6 November – the UN starts sanctions to isolate SA
politically and economically;
• A maximum security institution on Robben Island is
completed.

15. 1963:
• 7 August – UN Resolution 181 is passed, calling
for a voluntary arms embargo of SA;
• Dorothy Nyembe is arrested for furthering the
objectives of the banned ANC and is sentenced
to 3 years in prison.
1964:
• 31 January - The University Of Port Elizabeth is
established;
• Nelson Mandela’s original 5 year sentence is
commuted for life for high treason in the
Rivonia Trial.
1966:
11 February – District Six in Cape Town is
declared a "White Group Area" by the
government – forced removals ensue.

16. 1967:
• The Terrorism Act No 83 is passed – the South African
Police starts with counter-insurgency training;
• Nine months conscription for all white males start.
1968:
• 30 April - The bill establishing five universities for Blacks
comes into force
• The South African Bureau of State Security is formed,
operating independently of the South African Police, and
accountable to the Prime Minister.
1969:
• Dorothy Nyembe is convicted of defeating the end of
justice by harbouring members of Umkhonto we Sizwe
and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment in Barberton
Prison.

17. Forced removals
For example, District 6 (Cape Town) in 1966:
• Relatively cosmopolitan community
– mostly coloured residents, substantial number of coloured
Muslims, (Cape Malays), some black Xhosa residents and smaller
numbers of Afrikaans, whites, and Indians.
• 11 February 1966: government declares District Six a whites-
only area
– removals started in 1968 – relocation to featureless Cape Flats;
more than 60,000 people moved by 1982.
– All houses were bulldozed, only places of worship left standing.
• Government gave four reasons for removals:
– interracial interaction bred conflict;
– District Six a slum, fit only for clearance, not rehabilitation;
– Area crime-ridden and dangerous;
– the district was a vice den, full of immoral activities like
gambling, drinking, and prostitution.

18. • In Sophiatown, starting on 9
February 1955:
– 2 000 policemen, armed with guns,
rifles, and knobkieries forcefully
moved families to Meadowlands,
Soweto;
– Total of 60 000 people moved over
period of eight years.
• In Port Elizabeth, starting in 1962:
– The whole of the South End district
(prime real estate) forcibly
depopulated and flattened in 1965;
– relocations continued until 1975.

20. Boesman and Lena: staging
ACT ONE
An empty stage.
A coloured man – Boesman – walks on…
Minimalist staging has a structural as well as a thematic
function:
• Structural
• Indeterminacy of place, both physical and social.
• Thematic
– Fugard, note 13/7/68 (p. xxii): “Sense of terrible physical and
spiritual destitution”.
– Indeterminacy of identity.

21. The emptiness is broken by
the gradual construction of
their pondokkie:
• Boesman: We’re
whiteman’s rubbish…He
throws it away, we pick it
up…Sleep in it. Eat it. We’re
made of it now.. (Act II,
p.41).
– Parallels with 'Lena's Mass’
(Act I, p. 35):
• transubstantiation perverted,
miracle corrupted.
• No hope for a ‘better’ life.

22. Staging – characters
BOESMAN, a Coloured man
LENA, a Coloured woman
OUTA, an old African
• Social stratification:
• White character(s) absent, yet looming large in dialogue, and
in context.
• Stereotypical images of people on fringes of society:
• By resorting to stereotypes, Fugard emphasizes the plight of
the downtrodden;
• ‘ciphers’ of suffering (ref. Fugard’s notes).

23. Boesman and Lena: the structure
Frontispiece reads:
BOESMAN AND LENA
A PLAY
IN TWO ACTS

24. The idea of duality informs, and is
reinforced by, the structure of the play:
Boesman and Lena
Male Female
Self Other
caught between
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oppression / /Freedom
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
White/ /Black
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Coming (here, now)/ /Going (there, then)

25. NOTE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TERM
‘OPPOSITION’ AND THE TERM ‘DUALITY’:
• ‘Opposition’ = conflict;
= either/or.
• ‘Duality” = condition
of being
twofold;
= both apart
and part of

26. The first speech in the play is Lena’s:
“Here?”
• “Here” is the mud-flats of the
Eastern Cape:
– “Mud! Swartkops!” (Act I, p.3).
• It is a place between leaving and
arriving:
– Lena: I meet the memory of myself on
the old roads…Is she coming or going?
(Act I, p. 29).
• It is a liminal space where all
meaningful action has ceased:
– Boesman [after a pause]: And now?
What’s going to happen now?
Lena: Is something going to happen
now? (Act II, p.49).

27. Liminality
• From the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold” :
– a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective
state, conscious or unconscious, of being on the
"threshold" of or between two different existential planes;
– used to refer to in-between situations and conditions that
are characterized by
• the dislocation of established structures,
• the reversal of hierarchies, and
• uncertainty regarding the continuity of tradition and future
outcomes.
• The term has passed from neuropsychology into
broad popular usage:
– liminality can be applied to a variety of concrete problems
of transformation in the historical, social, and political
world;
– Also a literary application.

28. Liminality:
– a psychological subjective state, between
two different existential planes:
• Lena: …I’m moeg! Eina! *…+
Boesman [aggressively]: I’m always happy.
(Act I, p.5).
• Fugard’s notes, 23/7/68: “Image is that which
releases an emotional and psychological
complex in an instant of time” (p. xxiii).
– Image of Boesman and Lena walking, never
realized as action, caught in freeze-frame
between one step and the next.
– McLuckie, 1993: 2; ‘walking’ for Godot.
– Continual references to walking juxtaposed
with the sense of their going nowhere;
emphasizes futility of their existence.

29. Liminality:
– a metaphysical subjective state
between two different existential
planes:
• Boesman and Lena are coloured, neither
black nor white:
– Lena [speaking to Outa]: …Not like your
dances… *and+ we don’t tickle it like the
white people. (Act II, p. 44).
– Lena’s song: Boesman is ‘n Boesman/Maar hy
dra ‘n Hotnot hoed (Act I, p. 13; Act II, p.44).
• Lena’s Mass (ref. Fugard’s notes, 23/8/68,
p. xxiv) in last lines of act one:
– An act of transubstantiation, secularized:
Lena: …old mug, hey. Bitter tea, a piece of
bread. Bitter and brown. The bread should
have bruises. This is my life.

30. Liminality:
– Characterized by the dislocation of established structures:
• Forced removal, repeated destruction of their pondokkie;
• Apartheid (Act II, p. 43).
– Characterized by the reversal of hierarchies:
• Cosmopolitan settlements like District Six and South End declared
‘whites only’ areas.
– Characterized by uncertainty regarding the future:
• Lena’s confusion regarding their past travels;
– “Look ahead my sister. To what? Boesman’s back” (Act I, p.7).
• Lena: Is something going to happen now? (Act II, p.49);
• Fugard’s notes, 26/12/68: “How do I align myself with a future, a
possibility, in which I believe but of which I have no clear image?”
– Absurd, in other words.
• “…absurdity as a condition resulting from the human power
structures that govern life, not as the condition of life itself”
(McLuckie, 1993: 7).

31. The character of Lena:
• Composite figure (ref Fugard’s notes):
– 6/7/68: A Lena on the banks of the Swartkops River…
– 13/7/68: Memory of another Coloured Woman…
• “Lena is preoccupied with uncovering her identity,
which she believes is held in her past and in an other's
recognition of her” (McLuckie, 1993: 3):
– “I’ll work it out, back and back until I reach Coega Kop” (Act
I, p. 14).
– Her attachment to Hond: “I’ll tell you what it is. Eyes, Outa.
Another pair of eyes. Something to see you” (Act I, p. 26).
– “Look back one day, Boesman. It’s me, that thing you sleep
along the roads” (Act 1, p. 8).
– She tells Outa: “You be witness to me. Watch!” (Act I, p. 24).
• To “watch” is also the function of the audience;
• Ref. Fugard’s notes, 6/7/68: “…the demand that the truth be told,
that I must not bear false witness.”

32. Lena “demand*s+ that her life be witnessed”
(Fugard, 1974: xxiii):
• “…Lena craves a witness to her existence
through Boesman” (McLuckie, 1993: 2).
• Focus on absurdity of existence in such a
liminal space;
– “I’m still out there, walking!” (Act 1, p. 7)
• Impacts on Lena’s sense of identity (Act1,
pp. 16-17):
– Lena: Help me Boesman!
Boesman: What? Find yourself?
*…+ Who are you?
Lena: Mary. I want to be Mary.
• Biblical connotations (link to Lena’s Mass);
• McLuckie, 1993: 2: “Lena…seeks a definition of
her being.”
• Lena’s words: Moer. No.

33. The character of Boesman:
Ref. Fugard’s notes:
• 2/10/67: “Boesman – self-hatred and shame, focused on
Lena…” *the other+;
• 19/7/68: “…What he really hates is himself.”
He has no sense of his place in the world, despite his claims:
• “I know my way. I know my world” (Act I, 19).
In this liminal position, “Boesman…can be said to spurn his
identity and falsely attempt to assume another to (re)gain a
sense of dignity, albeit in the discourse and practices
prevalent in the white scale of values, not his own”
(McLuckie, 1993:2).
• [Boesman starts to smash the shelter with methodical and
controlled violence.]
Lena: Hotnot bulldozer! Hey, hey! (Act II, p. 55)

34. “Boesman…fears an encounter with his self because
his false sense of identity might be brought into
question” (McLuckie, 1993: 3).
• Boesman [emphatically]: Here! Right here where I
am (Act I, p. 7).
• Lena: Mary. I want to be Mary. Who are you?
[The laugh dies on Boesman’s lips.] (Act I, p. 17).
But he, like Lena, needs his life to be witnessed:
• Boesman: I did nothing to him. You saw that.
Lena: Now you want a witness too. (Act II, p. 51).
Boesman’s words:
• Lena: You got some words tonight, Boesman.
Freedom. Truth. What’s that? Sies? (Act II, p. 51)

35. Outa as a function:
• Witness to Boesman and Lena’s
existence, but his life and death
are as unintelligible as his
words:
– Emphasis on absurdity of liminal
social status.
• Represents playwright, as well
as audience:
– No guarantee that Boesman and
Lena’s plight is fully understood;
– Personalizes their experience, yet
problematizes issues surrounding
their identity.

36. The ending of the play
At the end of the play Boesman becomes
uncharacteristically generous, giving a detailed
account of their past travels to Lena:
• Boesman: Redhouse to Missionvale…I worked on the
salt pans. Missionvale to Bethelsdorp. Back again to
Redhouse…that’s where the child died. Then to
Kleinskool. Kleinskool to Veeplaas. Veeplaas to here.
First time. After that, Redhouse…Bethelsdorp,
Korsten, Veeplaas, back here the second time. Then
Missionvale again, Veeplaas, Korsten, and then here,
now.
*…+
Lena: It doesn’t explain anything.(Act II, p. 56).

37. Yet they take up their burden and continue:
• [They look around for the last time, then turn
and walk off into the darkness.]
Ambiguous: their endless, pointless journeying
will continue, but with a newfound sense of
hope despite the absurdity of their existence:
Lena: Anyway, somebody saw a little bit. Dog
and a dead man [and the audience].
*…+
You still got a chance. Don’t lose it.

38. Theme/s
• Displacement
• Alienation IDENTITY/SELFHOOD
• Liminality (absurdity)
The play considers the tragic loss of an integrated
self in an unjust society, where absurdity is a
condition that results from the human power
structures that govern life.