The Captain's Tiger

The Captain’s Tiger provides a glimpse of an author’s beginnings, that rare chance to witness the embryonic start of a great man’s life with all the shadows and light so much part of the writer’s landscape. Fugard catches us unawares in a story that is not all that it seems—just like life. —Pretoria News

In The Captain’s Tiger, Athol Fugard sets out as a young seafarer and writer to begin The Great Novel—the exciting tales of his mother, a young Afrikaner, and her escape from small-town life. But what he discovers on his travels is that the secret to great writing comes from the desperate need to tell the truth, and in turn he finds his voice as an author.

Subtitled a "Memoir for the Stage," the play is told both from the point of view of the twenty-year-old author who was the captain’s tiger—a glorified personal servant to the ship’s captain—and the author as his current-day self. This is a fascinating voyage, a writer’s pilgrimage, a whole painful process we are privy to. We witness his coming of age through author monologues, recreations of onboard conversations, letters written to his mother, imagined discourse, and dreams. Fugard has created a personal dramatic structure moving from present to past, from reality to reverie. One of the author’s most imaginative works, Fugard has created a world with imagery that is visual, visceral and poetic.