The productions of playwright and director Athol Fugard have profoundly transformed South African theatre. In his first performance back on a Johannesburg stage, 82-year-old Athol Fugard is a white-bearded, cardigan-clad dynamo, crackling and fizzing with theatrical life force. But his words moved mountains in apartheid South Africa. Fugard adds: “I do think that over the next few years he is going to become more significant. “Prejudice and racism are still alive and well in South Africa.