Tough Questions for Principals of ‘My Children! My Africa!’ : Theater: South African playwright Athol Fugard tells a Dorsey High School class that it’s up to young people to break down apartheid. ‘You all have to become political animals,’ he says.

The young student stood up, surrounded by a classroom full of her peers at Dorsey High School near Baldwin Hills and directed a question at one of the English language’s most revered playwrights. She was African-American, he was a white South African. She had seen his play with her classmates at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, and seemed deeply troubled.

“How can you, as a white man, speak for black people?”

The playwright, Athol Fugard, took in a long breath. This was his first visit to an American classroom, where he had come Wednesday with actors Brock Peters and Nancy Travis and producer Vidal Sassoon to discuss his current play, “My Children! My Africa!,” about a black teacher and two gifted students--one white, one black.

The question was familiar to Fugard, whom some black South Africans have resented for becoming a spokesman for their people.

“I accept no limitations on my imagination. It would be just as impertinent of me to write a female character,” he said, gesturing to Travis, who plays the white student, Isabel, “as a black one. If you accept those limits, then Brock Peters can never play Chekhov, because he’s not a white Russian. The mission of artists is to transcend the limits of human experience and go anywhere.”

Peters (who plays the teacher, Mr. M.) chimed in immediately: “For me, the greatest book ever written on the Spanish mind was written by a black man--Richard Wright’s ‘Pagan Spain.’ He broke down barriers, and observed. This is what South Africa’s apartheid system opposes. Any limits on Athol’s, or anyone’s, imagination perpetuates apartheid.”

There were more tough, focused questions from the students, who, according to Dorsey’s humanities program coordinator, Fahamisha Butler, are getting a crash course in South Africa. They’ve been reading, viewing the film “Cry Freedom,” and listening to guest lecturers from South Africa. So, full of her own research, Gail Sabbs, 16, asked the two actors (the third, Sterling Macer Jr., who portrays the black student, Thami, could not attend) what research they had done for their roles.

Both Peters and Travis agreed that their greatest resource was director Fugard himself. “This is a man,” Peters noted, “who has written works that deal compassionately with people at all levels of life in South Africa. Such humanity is what an actor feeds on.” Travis: “We studied South African history and so on, but I try to put my character in my own terms, so I can empathize with her.”

Fugard saw Travis’ Isabelle as “completely ignorant of Thami’s way of life because she is separated from him by the system. But we see in the play--and I believe this--that young people are young people regardless of skin color.”

It was because of this theme in “My Children! My Africa!” that Sassoon decided to bring the play from its La Jolla Playhouse run to the Henry Fonda Theatre. “I’ve never produced a play before,” Sassoon said. “When I saw it in La Jolla, I wanted to be a part of it, because it spoke to my family. I have three white children, and an adopted black child, David. He’s now 18, and in college. They grew up together, white and black, so they have one less prejudice in their lives.” (The Vidal Sassoon Foundation announced Wednesday that a $30,000 contribution to the production will buy approximately 1,500 tickets for students to seethe play before it closes on Dec. 2.)

The Dorsey students, like Fugard’s native South Africans, expressed some sharp differences on the play. Natasha Bullock, 17, related closely to the play’s classroom setting and the sometimes fractious teacher-student relationship. “Isabelle,” Bullock remarked, “was allowed to speak for herself. But the teacher sometimes spoke for Thami, when Thami wanted to speak for himself.”

But senior Vincent Lopez wasn’t satisfied with the play’s politics. “How can you say,” he challenged Fugard, “that it’s up to young people to change things, when those in power are making sure that apartheid stays intact?”

“I meant that it’s up to young people to break down that system,” Fugard explained. “Youth in any country, especially the U.S., can’t just sit back and expect things to change. You all have to become political animals.”

After the discussion, Fugard reflected on Lopez’s query. “Hard questions like that come from anger and no compromise, which I understand. That anger is bubbling under the surface in this country. I can feel it. These are the questions in the play. I hope audiences listen, and take them back home.”