In a sense, Athol Fugard always remained a mystery. He was the sort of person in whose presence you felt a deep well of wisdoms hiding, wisdoms he would never divulge unless he trusted you, and how were you ever to earn that trust? But he once allowed me to cut his play Hello and Goodbye, because he couldn’t be present during rehearsals – an act of generosity quite unprecedented in a writer. They usually hug close every word they have written.
Invoking that generous permission many years later, I made a cut of another play of his – The Road to Mecca – only because it seemed a touch too prolix in this more shorthanded world. When I sent it to him, he said, with the frankness that Athol never softened with colleagues, that he wasn’t up to reading it because he had so many loving memories of that play. Perhaps he’d leave permission with his literary executor to allow a cut to Mecca when he was dead. There was a laughing wryness in his tone, so I don’t think he meant it for a second.
