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This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. As a playwright, actor, and director, Athel Fugard defied South Africa's apartheid system, and the government punished him for it. He died Saturday at the age of 92. We're going to listen back to the interview we recorded in 1986, eight years before the end of apartheid. Fugard was a white South African who wrote about the emotional

and psychological consequences of his country's white supremacist system. When Fugard co-starred in his

1961 play The Blood Not with black actor Zakes Mukai, they became the first black and white

actors in South African history to share a

stage. Soon after, Fugard was approached by a group of black actors seeking his help to start a

company. Together, they formed the Serpent Players. The company was frequently harassed by the

authorities. A few members were imprisoned. Fugard's reputation

for defiance spread, and in 1967, the government revoked his passport. It was restored four years

later. Fugard wrote more than 30 plays, including Master Harold and the Boys and Bozeman and

Lena. He co-wrote the plays, Siswee Banzwe is

dead, and the island with the Black South African actors John Connie and Winston and Shana.

His plays have been staged in the U.S. Six of his plays were produced on Broadway. He won a Tony

Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2011.

When I spoke with Fugard in 1986, I asked him why he remained in South Africa,

where he lived under the apartheid system he opposed.

I suppose it's a question of my continued existence as a writer. I just couldn't see myself writing about any other place or any other time.

I have on occasions in the past described myself as a regional writer, not meaning to be

falsely modest or anything like that, but a regional writer in the sense I think that Faulkner

was a regional writer in America.

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