Boesman and Lena by Athol Fugard

First published: 1969

First produced: 1969, at Rhodes University Little Theatre, Grahamstown, South Africa

Type of plot: Social realism

Time of work: The twentieth century

Locale: South Africa

Principal Characters:

• Boesman, a “colored” man in his fifties
• Lena, a “colored” woman in her fifties
• Old African, an elderly black man

The Play

The title characters of Boesman and Lena are South African “coloreds” (this word is in quotation marks because it is a governmental racial designation that is offensive to many of those classified as such). As the first act opens, they have been dispossessed of their home by the white authorities, and they are walking along the mudflats of a river in South Africa. They carry all of their possessions in bundles; Boesman carries his on his back, while Lena carries hers on her head. They are middle-aged, and their dress and demeanor indicate that they have led a life of hardship and poverty.

The conflict between the two is almost immediately apparent. As Lena makes observations and asks Boesman questions about the condition of their lives, he tersely tells her to stop talking. Boesman does not want to think about the whys and wherefores of their lives, but Lena wants to know why their lives are as they are and asks him such questions as why he stopped at the mudflats and in what order they lived in certain locations. She wants to remember the past; Boesman, on the other hand, angrily states that life consists only of what is happening at the present moment.

Lena also desperately wants someone to share her quest for finding out how and why her life came to be in such a condition; she wants a witness to her quest and her life, both past and present. The major aspect of the conflict between Boesman and Lena is that he refuses to play this role. He berates Lena for asking questions, laughs at her, and makes jokes about her questions. Still, she believes that she needs him to help her in her quest, because he is the sole witness to their many moves, the places they have lived, and how they arrived at their current desperate situation. Boesman, however, laughs derisively as he tells Lena that he is aware that she wants him to help her find herself. Boesman continues to dismiss Lena’s questions as nonsense.

When an old black man who only speaks Xhosa comes along, Lena quickly tries to communicate with him. They each talk—she in English, he in Xhosa—with neither understanding the other. However, Lena pretends, or has the illusion, that she is carrying on a dialogue with the man. Boesman angrily leaves the scene for most of this interaction, stating that the man will turn his and Lena’s resting place into a “Kaffir nest” (“Kaffir” is a South African word equivalent to “nigger”). In this part of the play, Fugard emphasizes that Boesman and Lena differentiate between “coloreds” and black Africans. Lena overlooks the man’s race in her need for a sympathetic companion and witness.

Though neither Lena nor the old African understands the other, each speaks as if genuine communication were occurring. The old man explains that he is dying and that while looking for his relatives he lost his way. Lena tells him of her past and present experiences. The lack of real communication is revealed as the old man says that he is dying, for Lena interprets his words as small talk and continues to respond as her illusion dictates. Her utter desperation for a companion is betrayed when the old man gets up to leave and she throws herself at him in order to stop him.

When Boesman returns, he is physically abusive to the old man, shoving him to the ground and taking away the blanket Lena had given to him (she is away gathering wood for a fire). The act ends when Lena returns and sits by the old man rather than with Boesman, sharing her tea and bread with the man. Boesman watches the two, leaving his food untouched, as Lena shows some independence from him by her relationship, such as it is, with an outsider.

The second act is dedicated more to Boesman’s thoughts and actions than to Lena’s. As act 2 begins, Lena and the old man are still together, and Boesman, under the influence of wine, watches. As Boesman and Lena exchange contentious words, it is Boesman who now recalls the past. He relives their dispossession from the land and recollects his feeling of amusement as other people tried to save their possessions from the oncoming bulldozers. Nonwhite people are pushed around by the whites, Boesman says, because whites consider them mere garbage, not human beings.

Lena notes that Boesman still will not tell her how and why they arrived at their present situation and asks him more questions. She wants to know, for example, why he has been so cruel to her and why he hit her for allegedly dropping bottles that he now confesses he broke. This accusation triggers a rare moment of introspection on Boesman’s part. The indications are that he hits her out of frustration and anger at himself, as he hits his hand with his fist as he tries to answer her. His frustration is evident as he states his belief that life is meaningless: “Our life is dumb.”

Lena desperately wants a witness for Boesman’s moment of introspection, but the two discover that the old African has died during their confrontation. Boesman fears that he may be blamed for the man’s death, and in a case of role reversal, he wants Lena to bear witness to the truth. He panics, while she stays calm and taunts him about how he will explain the situation to the police. Boesman loses control and beats the corpse, giving Lena the chance to taunt him further: Now it will certainly appear to the authorities as if he has killed the man. Boesman then quickly packs their belongings and asks Lena if she is coming with him; she refuses. Then, as Boesman finishes loading their packages, she decides to go with him.

As they load, Boesman answers Lena’s initial questions regarding how they got to where they are. Though he has answered a question she had felt to be of the utmost importance, she now realizes that knowing the order of their travels does not really explain anything to her. Still, as the play ends, Lena is somewhat satisfied, for she at last has had a witness (the old African), and, as she tells Boesman, “I’m alive. . . . There’s daylights left in me.” The play ends with the two continuing their travels.

Dramatic Devices

Athol Fugard realizes the themes of Boesman and Lena in a variety of ways. The empty set onto which Boesman and Lena wander conveys a feeling of a wide, desolate landscape. This landscape is an appropriate setting for Lena’s questioning of her life and her feelings of being cut off from humanity. In addition, the contrast between the two characters is immediately imparted. Boesman carries his belongings on his back, indicating his physicality, while Lena carries all of her belongings on her head, reflective of her intellectual side.

Another dramatic device Fugard utilizes is the old African man who speaks Xhosa while Lena can only communicate to him in English or Afrikaans, neither of which he understands. The futility of their dialogue underscores Lena’s desperation for companionship and a connection to humanity beyond the cruelty of Boesman. Interestingly, Fugard provides no stage direction for how the old African’s remarks, which Fugard translates into English, are to be conveyed to the audience. It is important for the audience to realize that the old man and Lena are communicating at cross-purposes and that the old man is dying. One means could be a film projector. This aspect of the play—communicating the old man’s words to the audience—is one of the greatest imaginative challenges in staging the play.

It is significant, too, that in the first act the long monologues belong to Lena and the short replies to Boesman, while in the second act the reverse is true. This division is essential because the first act conveys Lena’s concerns with the meaning of her dispossession and her life, while the second act conveys Boesman’s reasons for being cruel to Lena and his views on existence. Thus, Fugard concentrates on one character in each act to detail their individual thoughts and concerns.

The nature of the characters’ long monologues is also interesting. Lena wants to know about and understand her life; her curiosity is evidenced by her constant statements and questions. Boesman, however, believes that people are mere garbage and that the present is the only time in which he exists, so that the past has no meaning or usefulness in explaining his and Lena’s situation. Therefore, Boesman’s and Lena’s monologues are central in defining the opposition in which they stand.

Critical Context

Boesman and Lena is a central play in Athol Fugard’s canon, for it presents his concerns for the nonwhite South African population. Indeed, most of Fugard’s plays have black characters. For example, the central relationship in “MASTER HAROLD” . . . and the Boys (pr., pb. 1982) is between Harold and his black servant, Sam. Some of Fugard’s early plays, such as The Island (pr. 1973) and The Blood Knot (pr. 1961), focus exclusively on nonwhite characters. His plays are consistent in their commitment to portraying and protesting the conditions that nonwhites faced in South Africa.

Boesman and Lena is representative of Fugard’s body of work because it demonstrates the influences of Camus, Samuel Beckett, and Bertolt Brecht. Beckett’s influence on the play is apparent in the basic plot—two central characters, alone in a desolate landscape, who are forced to deal with their baffling condition, a story line similar to that of Beckett’s En attendant Godot (pb. 1952; Waiting for Godot, 1954). The desolation of Boesman and Lena’s situation, their conflict, and the arrival of a third person who cannot understand them are also reminiscent of Waiting for Godot. The Brechtian influence might seem more subtle, for Brecht wrote large-cast plays on sweeping themes. Both Brecht and Fugard, however, have written indictments of society. Boesman and Lena is a social protest play, for Fugard is presenting an implicit indictment of apartheid laws that made possible such removals and dispossessions as Boesman and Lena face. Fugard, therefore, combines in Boesman and Lena significant influences of writers with quite divergent approaches.

Boesman and Lena captures themes and character types that recur in Fugard’s works and evidences his belief that theater can serve as a civilizing influence on society. The inhumane conditions depicted in the play are faced in real life by many of his countrymen, even in post-apartheid South Africa. Fugard’s use of approaches and dramatic devices borrowed from other major modern writers and filtered through his own imagination has permitted him to develop a powerful idiom for drama of social protest. A focus on moral conscience and social critique resurfaced as important themes in Fugard’s plays from the 1990’s. Playland (pr., pb. 1992) and Valley Song (pr. 1995, pb. 1996), among others, focused on post-apartheid South Africa and the myriad dynamics that the new social structure imposed.

Sources for Further Study

Benson, Mary. Athol Fugard and Barry Simon: Bare-Stage, a Few Props, Great Theatre. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1999.

Fugard, Athol. Introduction to Boesman and Lena and Other Plays. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1974.

Fugard, Athol. Notebooks, 1960-1977. New York: Knopf, 1984.

Gray, Stephen, ed. Athol Fugard. London: Methuen, 1991.

Haupffleisch, Temple. Athol Fugard: A Source Guide. Johannesburg, South Africa: Donker, 1982.

King, Kimball, and Albert Ertheim. Athol Fugard: A Casebook. New York: Garland, 1997.

Seidenspinner, Margarete. Exploring the Labyrinth: Athol Fugard’s Approach to South African Drama. Essen, South Africa: Blaue Eule, 1986.

Walder, Dennis. Athol Fugard. New York: Twayne, 1984.