Studio Finds 'Mecca' at Last

Director Waited Years to Stage S. African Scribe's Classic Play

The great South African playwright Athol Fugard meant to send Studio Theatre artistic director Joy Zinoman a note of thanks last year.

He had heard that Studio had done a nice job with its production of his 1989 political drama, "My Children! My Africa!"

"My memory is not what it used to be, but I think I wrote to them and said, 'Thank you very much.' Well, at least I hope I did," Fugard says on the phone from his adopted home near San Diego. "Because that's the least I can do when somebody keeps something of mine alive."

Fugard, widely regarded as one of the best living playwrights, will have another chance this month as Studio takes on another of his classics, "The Road to Mecca."

"At 76, most people see you as already parked -- in the used lot, you know," Fugard says in his lilting Afrikaner accent. "I feel . . . just great gratitude."

It's mutual; Zinoman has been waiting 25 years to put on this play.

"The Road to Mecca," the story of an old, eccentric artist ostracized from her tiny African village, immediately captured Zinoman's imagination when she saw it in New York in the mid-1980s. But she held off bringing the play to Studio, first because a touring production came through Washington and then because it was staged at another theater five blocks away.

But perhaps it was worth the wait: To both playwright and director, "Mecca" has grown in resonance and personal significance.

"I must say that I'm glad that it took so long," says Zinoman, 65. "Because I'm also like some old lady now. I'm also someone who understands a lot more now -- about the issues in the play."

It's a true story, the tale in "Mecca." Fugard and his wife moved to the village of Nieu Bethesda in the mid-1970s so he could have a quiet place to write. While getting to know the locals, he kept hearing tales of a crazy, reclusive woman, Helen Martins, who saw visions and spent all her time filling her back yard with cement sculptures of owls and camels and men in turbans. The walls of her home were covered in crushed glass to reflect the light from her massive collection of oil lamps.

Fugard's friends had been pushing him to write about the woman for some time, but it wasn't until after her death, when he got to know a young teacher who had been fiercely loyal to Martins, that he found the inspiration for his play.

The teacher gave Fugard a picture of herself and Martins, "just a little snapshot of the two of them," he recalls. "But what that snapshot is radiant with is the trust and love that existed between these two women. I was so moved. It came to me out of the picture like it was tangible. Like I could put my hand on it and touch it and feel it. When I saw that photograph, I saw what the play had to be about."