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Athol Fugard - playwright, director and actor will read for the first time his new short stories about his homeland in the heart of South Africa. Athol Fugard the outstanding and gifted writer, director and actor will read his new short stories that he has just written about his homeland in the heart of South Africa at The Space. This follows his thirty plays, a novel, notebooks and memoir. He was born on 11 June 1932 in Middleburg, Great Karro, Cape Province, South Africa. His mother was an Afrikaner and his father was of mainly Irish-English and Hugenot ancestry. Athol Fugard is a playwright who writes for his time but who also mines the memory of history. He writes mainly about South Africa, the country he knows, loves and needs. He is grounded in his past and in his country and like Antaeus draws strength when he touches it. When he was writing Playland he said "I need to be home on South African soil for that infusion of blood which the work is ready to receive" He created significant theatre in South Africa and his plays chart the history of the country. Fugard writes to save stories from silence: as he says as the protagonist in The Captains Tiger "I and my writing belong to a world where a lot of People cannot put into words on paper and tell their stories!" Critics sing his praises. Mel Gussow said that Fugard "has achieved his reputation - as high as that of any other living playwrights with plays that have social and political content. He is a humanitarian - a rare playwright"