The Train Driver at Lantern Theater Company

Athol Fugard; dir: Matt Pfeiffer.

Authors

• Athol Fugard

The Train Driver is classic Fugard, and one of his most important plays. The playwright, known throughout the world as a chronicler of his native South Africa’s apartheid past, has stated, “For me, The Train Driver is the biggest of them all. Everything I have written before has been a journey to this.” This seminal work, which received its world premiere directed by the playwright at the newly opened Fugard Theatre in one of Cape Town’s most politically contentious areas, was inspired by the true story of a mother who with her three children committed suicide on the train tracks in Cape Town. The two-person drama unfolds between the train’s engineer and the grave digger who buries “the ones without names.”