Alan Paton
Alan Stewart Paton (1903-1988). Writer, teacher, reformatory principal, influential novelist and anti-apartheid activist. Best known for his seminal novel Cry, the Beloved Country (1948).
Contents
Biography
He was born in Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu Natal on 11 January 1903.
An educationalist by profession, in 1935 Alan Paton became principal of the Diepkloof Reformatory for black offenders in Johannesburg.
Paton leapt to international fame with the publication of his first novel, the brilliant "Cry the Beloved Country" in 1948. The novel has been translated many times and has been filmed twice.
He was a founder member of the Liberal Party and its leader between 1955 and its dissilusion in 1968. He died in Durban on 12 April 1988.
Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance
Stage and screen adaptations of his novels
His novel Cry, the Beloved Country (1948) became an internationally acclaimed work, and has been adapted to stage and screen a number of times under its original title, but also as a musical titled Lost in the Stars (by Maxwell Anderson with music by Kurt Weill, 1949).
For more information, see Cry, the Beloved Country and Lost in the Stars.
Paton's second novel Too Late the Phalarope also joined the best-seller lists, and it too, has been dramatised (by Robert Yale Libott) and the play produced on Broadway in 1956.
Plays
The Patons regularly invited friends from all races to their home in Kloof (a suburb of Durban) and during these large and lively social gatherings, satirical poems were often recited and impromptu plays performed. He also wrote a number of theatrical works, including:
- Louis Botha (play in five acts, 1932, revised 1935)
- A Light Comedy (one-act play, 1949)
- Last Journey (a play about David Livingstone, 1959, produced in Lusaka to mark the opening of the new Inter-racial theatre)
- Mkhumbane (a musical, with Todd Matshikiza, 1960)
- Chess in Yugoslavia (short play, 1961)
- Sponono (with Krishna Shah, 1962).
- David Livingstone (play). This is a completely new play text, incorporating only minor sections from 1959 original.
- Man and Poet (for the Inaugural Festival of the 1820 Settlers National Monument, 1974).
Sources
South African History Online [1].
Wikipedia [2].
Tucker, 1997.
https://www.flatinternational.org/template_volume.php?volume_id=158
Hermann Wittenberg. 2007. Alan Paton’s writing for the stage: towards a non-racial South African theatre. South African Theatre Journal, 1: 307-327.
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