Athol Fugard: I regard what I call my apprenticeship period, out of which came two plays, one called No-Good Friday, the other called Nongogo. Both plays had required African — just exclusively African — actors. My apprenticeship, my masters in my apprenticeship were the great American playwrights, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, you name them. Somehow I learned the craft of playwriting, because it’s a craft, you know. It’s a little time mechanism that you wind up and put on a stage and it runs for 90 minutes and then the little mouse stops running around. And I learned my craft. Profound debt of gratitude I have to America at so many levels of my life. You know, thanks to America nowadays I earn enough. And it is America that has made it possible for me, the generosity and the perceptiveness of Americans, because somehow I think the magic was that the South African situation — the problem of race — is something Americans know only too well all about. I think that is the bridge which allowed them to enter into and engage with my writing.