`Yes," says Prof Marianne McDonald of her relationship with playwright Athol Fugard. "Yes. We are a couple. We share so many loves." This is not young love or first love: both have married; both have families. But there is an affinity: she turns to ask a question as the door opens behind her and Fugard, entering, answers before she speaks.

She is restless, talkative, creating a litter of books, notes, tapes and coffee-mugs around her chair. He is calm, humorous, physically and mentally collected. He sits for an interview as if for something he does constantly but without being bored. We don't waste time, but there is no sense of hurry. We talk of Arthur Miller: the structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.

Fugard accepts his friend's analysis as if he wishes it were his own. He explains his success in America as arising from the fact that America is still living with the tensions he portrays as belonging to South Africa. America is still a heck of a long way from where South Africa is now - "with all justification we can talk, now, about the South African miracle".

We talk about the power of words: "We could have been set for another Rwanda. But South Africa talked its way out of trouble. There are a lot of reasons why white South Africa woke up, but the truth is that it did. To a large degree that was due to outside pressures - I'm sure the Republic of Ireland made its protests - but gradually the number of us who said that apartheid was a kind of national self-suicide increased. We had a conversation. We created a climate in which these questions could be examined."

He is rehearsing McDonald's version of Sophocles's Antigone - she reminds me that his first acting role was as a shepherd in Oedi- pus Rex - and paces a circle around his cast like a gentle lion tamer. When he takes on the text he moves it into a vital pulse, a lean finger parsing the phrases into a darker counterpoint to Antigone's wistful invocations. But here it is, the play about learning what democracy means. Another conversation, almost Yeatsian as we decode theatrical function: "did that play of mine send out . . . ?"

Did that play of his send out? "The only thing I find frustrating is when I'm described, in the very narrow sense of the word, as a political playwright. My plays are about people. About the survival mechanisms we use. About decisions and the consequences of decisions. Yes - there's no question about it, the arts did give dissident voices an opportunity in South Africa. We made a contribution, but what share we had in the end result I can't tell.

"Art is a subversive process, and I don't doubt for one moment that when we get a longer perspective its contribution will be recognised - it is already, I think, and it's going to be even more exciting from now on. Arguably the new South Africa needs the arts more than the old. Constant vigilance - democracy is a very complicated thing for people who have never known it before."

I think of, but don't mention, Sizwe Banzi is Dead and The Road to Mecca, and Master Harold and the Boys and Captain's Tiger and My Children! My Africa!, and I think of the words he gave a character in The Coat: "We want to use the theatre . . . some of us might say to understand the world we live in but we also boast a few idealists who think that the theatre might have something to do with changing it . . . " With Marianne we leave Fugard behind at the Firkin Crane and settle among the chesterfields in the Shandon Court hotel to escape the unstoppable bells. Professor at the Departments of Theatre and Classics at the University of California at San Diego, she has a CV of bewildering brilliance - she is in Ireland to take up a Fulbright Scholarship at UCD - which includes a directorship of the American Ireland Fund.

But her work is in rehearsal up there at the Firkin Crane and all she can do now is talk about it - which we do. There's lots to talk about; then about Athol, there's more to talk about - the things she wants in her play which he won't use because they're too elaborate and he loves simplicity. But the play is going to Delphi for the Greek millennium celebrations, and Greece is her territory so they'll be used there!

In the theatre again, he says as she enters: "We feel a need for some material that you cut." She gropes among her papers and he says: "Yes, we very definitely feel a need for it." She finds it, hands it over, it moves back into the scene and against the descant of his Creon, Antigone's voice rises again, the staves fretted into another conversation.

Antigone will be performed at the Firkin Crane on Saturday and Monday and in the St John's Arts Centre, Listowel, on Tuesday.