Nobody can take what I love away from me. I would like to believe

Host: The theatre was empty, the echo of the last rehearsal still hanging in the air like incense. The stage lights glowed faintly, painting long shadows across worn floorboards scratched by decades of performance. Dust floated lazily through the spotlight — tiny, golden fragments of memory refusing to settle.

Rows of empty seats stretched out before the stage, quiet witnesses to countless stories once alive with breath and fire. In the wings, the hum of an old lighting rig pulsed like a heartbeat.

Jack stood center stage, hands in his pockets, eyes distant. Jeeny sat on the edge of the stage, her legs dangling, a script in her lap — pages curled, margins full of her handwriting.

It was that quiet hour when passion begins to look like exhaustion, and exhaustion begins to look like grace.

Jeeny: softly “Athol Fugard once said, ‘Nobody can take what I love away from me. I would like to believe that love is the only energy I’ve ever used as a writer. I’ve never written out of anger, although anger has informed love.’”
She glanced up at Jack. “Do you think that’s possible — to create purely from love?”

Jack: smiling faintly “Possible? Maybe. But not easy. Most people start creating when they hurt.”

Jeeny: “So did he. But he didn’t stay there. He let anger sharpen love, not replace it.”

Host: The light shifted slightly, softening. The theatre felt smaller now — more like a confession box than a stage.

Jack: “You know,” he said, “that’s what I’ve always admired about Fugard. He wrote about injustice, cruelty, fear — but somehow it all came out drenched in compassion. He didn’t accuse the world. He mourned it.”

Jeeny: “That’s the difference between love and rage, isn’t it? Rage demands destruction. Love demands redemption.”

Jack: “Or understanding.”

Jeeny: “And understanding is the beginning of change.”

Host: She closed her script and looked out toward the empty seats. “Sometimes,” she said quietly, “I think art only survives if it’s rooted in love. Anger burns fast. Love burns long.”

Jack: “Yeah, but love hurts more.”

Jeeny: smiling gently “Only when it’s honest.”

Host: The wind from an open backstage door stirred the curtains — a soft ripple, like a sigh.

Jack: “You know, when I was younger,” he said, “I used to write out of fury. Everything was protest, defiance, accusation. But all it did was echo my bitterness. It didn’t change anything. It didn’t move anyone.”

Jeeny: “Because art isn’t about shouting the loudest. It’s about feeling the deepest.”

Jack: “Exactly. Anger wants to wound. Love wants to heal — even if it bleeds in the process.”

Host: The stage light dimmed a little, leaving only one spotlight on them — intimacy framed in gold and shadow.

Jeeny: “Fugard lived through apartheid, through oppression, through betrayal. He had every reason to write from rage. But he didn’t. He wrote from mercy. That’s courage.”

Jack: “Mercy takes more strength than fury.”

Jeeny: “It’s the only thing that survives after fury.”

Host: Her voice carried softly through the cavernous space, as if the ghosts of actors past were listening — as if the walls themselves remembered compassion.

Jack: “You think that’s why he said ‘nobody can take what I love away from me’?”

Jeeny: “Yes. Because love’s the only thing tyrants can’t confiscate. You can silence a writer’s words, but not their tenderness.”

Jack: “And tenderness is rebellion too.”

Jeeny: “The quietest kind. The kind that terrifies cynics.”

Host: He smiled, his expression loosening — that rare moment when Jack’s guarded edges softened.

Jack: “You know what I think?”

Jeeny: “What?”

Jack: “Love’s the only energy that doesn’t decay with use. Everything else — anger, ambition, fear — burns out. But love replenishes itself.”

Jeeny: “Like art.”

Jack: “Like breath.”

Host: She stood slowly, stepping into the same pool of light with him. “Maybe that’s why Fugard’s plays endure,” she said. “Because they’re written not to punish, but to witness.”

Jack: “And witnessing is love too.”

Jeeny: “Especially when it hurts.”

Host: The silence between them felt sacred now — the kind of silence that doesn’t ask to be filled.

Jack: “You think we could ever write like that?” he asked softly.

Jeeny: “We could try. But first, we’d have to forgive the world enough to love it again.”

Jack: “Forgiveness — that’s the hardest art of all.”

Jeeny: “It’s also the truest.”

Host: The light dimmed further, leaving their faces half-lit — one tired, one luminous, both sincere.

Jack reached for the script she was holding and flipped through the pages, pausing at one of her handwritten notes in the margin. He read it aloud quietly:

“Don’t write to accuse. Write to connect.”

Jack: looking up “This yours?”

Jeeny: smiling faintly “Fugard’s, actually. I just borrowed it.”

Host: He laughed softly — a small, real sound that dissolved into the empty space.

Jeeny: “You see? Even our anger can become love if we let it teach us compassion instead of vengeance.”

Jack: “And that’s how you build art that outlives its wounds.”

Jeeny: “And maybe heal a few others along the way.”

Host: She took his hand — not romantically, but with that kind of shared reverence that only truth evokes.

They stood together in silence, the theatre now cloaked in shadow except for the single, unwavering light above them — a reminder that illumination is fragile, but persistent.

And as the scene faded into darkness, Athol Fugard’s words would echo through the empty theatre, tender and defiant at once:

“Nobody can take what I love away from me. I would like to believe that love is the only energy I’ve ever used as a writer. I’ve never written out of anger, although anger has informed love.”

Because love is not naïve —
it is resilient.

It absorbs pain and still reaches out.
It transforms fury into grace,
and injustice into understanding.

Anger burns.
But love — love endures,
soft, steady, invincible —
the only force that creates
without needing to destroy.