Ian Fraser (playwright)

South African writer and activist

Ian Fraser (born 18 April 1962) is a South African playwright, writer, comedian, anti Apartheid activist, artist, anarchist, and social agitator, now living in the USA. He began as South Africa's first street level comedian, "ranting verse" poet, and acerbic anti government satirist. He has consistently been a pro democracy, anti establishment voice, both under Apartheid and under the new dispensation in South Africa. Fraser has won many awards for his plays, including the 1992 Amstel Playwright of the Year Award and the 1992 Tonight AA Life Vita Award for Comedy. His comedic work has been compared with that of Americans Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks, and his dramatic writing to that of Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, and Tom Stoppard. Critics characterised Fraser's work as alternatively swinging between brutality and violence, and delicacy, sensitivity and grace. Alongside his plays, Fraser also performed eight "one man" satire shows, primarily at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival in South Africa, Africa's largest Arts Festival. His works repeatedly won the coveted "Pick of the Fringe" award.

Born Brent Haupt, Fraser did not finish high school or complete any formal training. After being conscripted in the then South African Defence Force, for a two year period (1981–82), he began to write and perform his own material from 1985 onwards. Fraser's experiences in the South African Defence Force provided much of the background for his first novel, published by Penguin Books (My Own Private Orchestra, ). In 1994, he began writing as an Internet technology columnist for the Johannesburg daily newspaper, The Star. He later wrote a weekly "Fraser's Razor" column for the Mail and Guardian newspaper. From 1994, he gradually became regarded as one of the leading voice over talents in South Africa. He was an official on air "voice" for the South African Broadcasting Corporation and their TV 2 channel. One of his popular TV ads for a hotel chain in South Africa (City Lodge) has emerged on YouTube. Fraser was threatened with police and legal action because of one of his fictional blog postings, Killing the President. This short work stands as one of the harshest satiric attacks ever on the ruling African National Congress government and Deputy President Jacob Zuma. The government was not amused, and only timely intervention by the Freedom of Expression Institute on Fraser's behalf prevented charges of treason and sedition. In April 2006, Fraser relocated to the United States, where he is now a legal resident. He is writing novels and raising children. The University of Wisconsin's Oshkosh Theater, staged Dogs of the Blue Gods and The Sugar Plum Fairy in early 2008. He won the AcidTheatre's Freedom of Speech Monologue Competition 2007, in the UK, for Putting the Fun Back into School Shootings. It was staged in Scotland in 2008, retitled for legal reasons, The Normal Sound of Architecture. The National English Literary Museum in Grahamstown, South Africa, contains a large collection of Fraser's papers and writings, as part of their collection of South African writers and playwrights. In July 2009, his Dogs of the Blue Gods play was staged at Brown University at Brown/Trinity Playwrights Repertory Theatre.