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A legendary playwright mines the depth of the human heart
The Shadow of the Hummingbird tells the story of an ailing man in his eighties and the afternoon spent with his ten-year-old grandson. In a charming meditation on the beauty and transience of the world around us, Fugard mined the depths of the human spirit with profound empathy and heart. The text of the play includes an introductory Prelude by Paula Fourie with extracts from Fugard’s unpublished notebooks.
Its wistful message, that it is more important to savor experience than to analyze it, is hard to argue with. Art itself is but a shadow on a wall, a reflection of life that nevertheless has its own reality. To lose yourself in the imagined universe of a play is perhaps one way of retaining a sliver of the innocence Mr. Fugard’s Oupa so cherishes.
—Charles Isherwood, New York Times
Athol Fugard (1932-2025) worked in the theater as a playwright, director and actor for more than fifty years. His plays include Blood Knot, Boesman and Lena, “Master Harold”… and the boys, The Road to Mecca, My Children! My Africa!, Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act and Valley Song.