Master Harold...and the Boys
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Master Harold...and the Boys is a play by Athol Fugard, taking place in South Africa during the apartheid era. 17-year old Hally spends time with two African servants, Sam and Willie, whom he has known all his life. On a rainy afternoon, Sam and Willie, both in their forties, are practicing ballroom steps in preparation for a major competition. Sam is quickly characterized as being the more worldly of the two; When Willie describes his ballroom partner as lacking enthusiasm, Sam correctly diagnoses the problem: Willie beats her if she doesn't know the steps. Hally then arrives from school. Sam is on an equal intellectual footing with Hally, and the two wobble between a father-son mentorship and a white-master-black-servant dictatorship; Willie, for his part, always calls the white boy "Master Harold." The play reaches an emotional apex as the beauty of the ballroom floor ("a world without collisions") is used as a transcendent metaphor for life, and also a creative English paper topic; but almost immediately despair returns. Hally's tyrannical father has been in the hospital recently, undergoing medical complications due to the leg he lost in the war, but it appears that today he is coming home. Hally, utterly distraught with this news, turns his anger on the two blacks, creating possibly permanent rifts in his relationship with Sam--who now refuses to call him anything but "Master Harold." The play ends on this unhappy note, though Willie, at least, has resolved not to be such a tyrant when it comes to ballroom dancing.
The play is known to be semi-autobiographical, and is frequently cited as a depiction of how institutionalized racism / bigotry / hatred can become absorbed by those who live under it. It is also known for its sparse setting and design (its recipe is frequently described as "Three actors, one set and a black man's ass") and the sheer quality of its dialogue.