Booktown Richmond to relaunch the Athol Fugard Festival

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Athol Fugard (Photo: Naomi Bruwer)

Booktown Richmond is proud to announce that they will be relaunching the Athol Fugard Festival. As lovers of the Karoo might know, the Fugard Festival was started in Nieu-Bethesda in 2009 and it was a highly successful festival. But when ABSA withdrew their sponsorship, Nieu-Bethesda could not find another sponsor and the Fugard Festival did not take place this year.

"'It is a great pity,' says Darryl David, founder of Booktown Richmond, 'that in the year that Athol Fugard (who people describe as the greatest living dramatist in the English-speaking world) celebrated his 80th birthday, Nieu-Bethesda could not honour one of her most famous residents. In fact, our press hardly gave him a mention on this momentous occasion. And that is what prompted me,' says David, 'to revive the Fugard Festival.'"

"Residents of Nieu-Bethesda need not fear," says David, "that Richmond is trying to colonize all the major festivals for ourselves. I realise we host BoekBedonnerd and the JM Coetzee Festival in Booktown Richmond. But I did start the Schreiner Festival in Cradock, and the Breyten Breytenbach Festival in Montagu. More than anyone, I think people will acknowledge that I am acutely aware of  writers’ bonds with certain places. And I know that you literally cannot have a Fugard Festival without Nieu-Bethesda. It would be akin to starting a Owl House Festival in Hanover!!!"

With this in mind David plans to host day one of the Fugard Festival in Booktown Richmond. "But on the second morning, we will take to the back roads on a literary pilgrimage to a landscape Fugard has hymned into South African literature – Nieu-Bethesda!"

The festival is being planned for the first quarter of 2013. Dates will be confirmed in the next month.  "But we would like to invite all past supporters of the Fugard Festival to please contact Darryl David at cowboys@sai.co.za or Peter Baker at pcbaker@mweb.co.za".

"We owe it to Athol Fugard, one of the great voices in South African literature, not to let the Fugard Festival die under our watch," says David.

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Kommentaar

  • Thanks David, I think u are doing an incredible job in promoting and preserving our literature. Been this year first time visitors to Schreiner Writers Fest in Cradock and to Richmond BoekBedonnerd = and we are to be regulars.

    Both these festivals were unique and so inspiring!

     

  • Bravo Darryl David! Ek was siedend kwaad toe die Fugard-fees (waarheen ek as Graaff-Reinetter en liefhebber van ons heel grootste dramaturg se werk) in die jaar dat Fugard 80 geword het, tot niet gegaan het. Borge het altyd geld vir sport, maar vir die kunste? Ga, Absa!

    Baie dankie dat jy die fees gaan terugbring Nieu-Bethesda toe - ek glo dit gaan net so 'n groot sukses wees as die Boekbedonnerd en die Schreiner-fees. Sien uit daarna!

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