Exits and Entrances

Athol Fugard

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN:
  9781559363198
• eBook ISBN:
  9781559366892
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: African Drama
• Index: Literature

The story of the one great artist's exit from the stage just as another was beginning his career in the theater.

In Exits and Entrances, Fugard details his brief yet formative experience with mentor André Huguenet, considered the finest classical actor of their native South Africa. The play opens in 1961, the year South Africa declared its independence from the British Commonwealth, as well as the year of Huguenet's death. As Fugard's playwright character learns of his mentor's passing, he reminisces about their first collaboration: a production of Oedipus Rex in 1956. Throughout the run of this 1956 production and in the years that follow, Huguenet and Fugard grow close and offer each other insights on life, writing, and art.

1961. The Playwright, twenty-nine, at his table in Port Elizabeth. It is late at night and he is making an entry in his notebook. After a few minutes of writing, he puts down his pen and reads what he has written:

PLAYWRIGHT:

June 1961. My usual late-night walk around the park—full moon, the air heavy with dew and autumn fragrances—damp soil, moldy leaves and at one point a seductive whiff of jasmine. I was back in bed, lying awake in the dark, smoking a pipe, when church bells began to toll. It was midnight and I suddenly realized I was listening to the birth cries of the new Republic of South Africa. A few seconds after the bells, an engine whistle started up, down in the marshaling yards—some patriotic Afrikaner, no doubt, who kept it going for at least three minutes. By this time a few motorcar hooters had also joined in. All in all a celebration even more dreary than the few desultory noises that usher in the New Year here in the windy city. By 12:45 it was all over—the night left once again to the moon, the empty streets and sleeping houses, the crickets in the hedges and the dew falling drop by drop from the roof gutter.

This morning I caught a snatch of the inaugural ceremony on the radio—a DRC minister, in tones of deep and exaggerated reverence, thanking God for our young republic. When the commentator announced that the ceremony had “now reached the most solemn moment of all,” I switched off. So there you have it—good-bye to the Union of South Africa and welcome to the young republic, out goes the queen and in comes our first Staats president. Arrivals and departures! And at a personal level as well: my dad off to hospital, where I think he will die; my three-week-old daughter newly arrived in my life from that same hospital; my new play out of my life and on its way to Johannesburg . . . and another small and unobtrusive exit—two inches at the bottom of an inside page of today’s newspaper, reporting the death of “the great Afrikaans actor, André Huguenet” . . . found dead in his sister’s home in Bloemfontein. No mention of the circumstances of his death, which doesn’t really surprise me. I think I know what happened.

(From this point on he slips easily into a direct relationship with the audience.)

Impeccable timing, of course! Nothing would have made André happier than to stand up and walk out on that sanctimonious dominee thanking the Almighty and telling the volk that they were God’s chosen people. His exit coincides so neatly with the birth of our Republiek I could almost believe he planned it that way. Because if there was one stage skill that André had truly mastered, it was timing—that instinct for the perfect moment, the precise second for the word, the action, the gesture, or in an instance that I will never, never forget: the cry. It was that moment in Oedipus the King when the old Shepherd puts the last piece of the puzzle into place, and as a result, Oedipus knows that he has murdered his father and slept with his mother, that his children are also his brothers and sisters. The Shepherd’s last line to him is: “If you, Master, are that man, then you are indeed the most miserable of all men.”

André, as Oedipus, standing at the top of the steps in front of the doors of his Theban palace, became very still, and we ordinary mortals held our breaths and waited. In those terribly silent seconds it seemed as if the whole world was waiting, and at the point when you thought you could no longer endure it and would have to scream, at that precise moment, not a second too soon or too late, André opened his mouth and out of it came the most awful cry that any member of that audience had ever heard. It sounded as if he had somehow reached down deep into himself and was dragging his genitals up through his body and throat and hanging them out of his mouth for all of us to spit on and curse. And that was not just one memorable performance! Oh no. André knew it was the moment of the play, so he hit that mark with uncanny accuracy virtually every night. I know what I am talking about because I was there onstage with him. Five years ago, the Labia Theatre in Cape Town. In those days the pool of local acting talent was very shallow so poor André had ended up having to cast me as that old Shepherd who clung so desperately to his ankles every night imploring him to stop his questions. I was twenty-four years old and my only stage experience had been in a couple of amateur productions.

(The Playwright wheels the costume rack onstage. On the table he lays out a stage-makeup kit, then prepares a mug of hot water, lemon and honey.)

I shared his dressing room because I also doubled as his dogsbody, fetching and carrying and serving him in whatever way I could. That production of Oedipus the King celebrated his thirtieth year on the stage. He was then fifty years old.

(The scene segues into 1956, the Labia Theatre dressing room. Offstage André is heard cursing in Afrikaans: “Hou jou fockin bek! Luis gat!”

A harassed and irritable André makes an entrance and sits down at the table where the Playwright has laid out André’s makeup kit, etc.)

ANDRÉ (As he starts his preparations for the performance): Young men with ugly knees should not wear short trousers . . .

PLAYWRIGHT: Who are you talking about?

ANDRÉ: You mean you didn’t notice?

PLAYWRIGHT: Billy?

ANDRÉ: Who else. And did you see the tackies he was wearing—Oh my God!—looked as if he had two of those poisonous Karoo locusts for feet. Enough, Zeus! Enough! Mind you, a sight like that would be as good a reason for Oedipus blinding himself as discovering who he’s been in bed with all this time. So . . . (Heavy sigh) . . . here we go again.

PLAYWRIGHT: Are you nervous?

ANDRÉ (Disdainfully): Good God no. If this was a London opening, then yes there might have been a little flutter, an added charge of adrenaline over and above the one I always get from performance. But in front of those half-aan-die-slaap domkoppe we are going to have out there tonight with their little notebooks and pencils, the mother city’s little coterie of theatre intellectuals? No, sweetheart. Most emphatically no. I have bred antibodies to the bite of those little vipers. (Suddenly suspicious and insecure) But why do you ask? Do you think I should be?

PLAYWRIGHT: No. You’re magnificent, and they’d have to be very fast asleep in their seats not to see that. But you did get some of your words wrong again in the run-through this afternoon.

ANDRÉ (Testily): Only because I knew my skirt was too short and that the front row would be looking up it and seeing my jockstrap. But of course that stupid cow wouldn’t listen to me when I warned her about that. Designer my arse!

So where did I go wrong?

PLAYWRIGHT: The opening scene and then a couple of bad ones with Jocasta.

ANDRÉ: Get your script—the first scene—give me my cues.

(They read the opening scene of Oedipus the King while André settles down at his table and applies his makeup for the role.)

“Citizens of this city that Cadmus founded, why are you here? . . .”

PLAYWRIGHT (Correcting him): “. . . why have you come here . . .”

ANDRÉ: Come now my little poephol, really . . .

PLAYWRIGHT: That is what Sophocles wrote.

ANDRÉ (Trying again): “Citizens of this city that Cadmus founded, why have you come here? What is it that you want from me? Why do I smell incense and hear prayers and hymns . . .”

PLAYWRIGHT: “. . . hymns and prayers . . .”

ANDRÉ: “. . . hear hymns and prayers and the cries of people weeping?”

PLAYWRIGHT: Once again.

ANDRÉ: Stop bullying me.

PLAYWRIGHT: Do you want to get it righ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Production History
• Contents
• Author’s Note
• Exits and Entrances
• Glossary
• Afterword
• About the Author