Friendships among women are important themes for twentieth-century women writers like May Sarton, Marge Piercy, and Joyce Carol Oates. However, it is unusual to find a man exploring the complexities of women's relationships, which is precisely what Athol Fugard does in The Road to Mecca (first performed in 1984 at the Yale Repertory Theater). He uses the dose friendship between Helen and Elsa to explore many issues, especially the isolation of the artist and other rebels and the ability of an artist to nurture younger friends. These universal themes enable the play to transcend mere character studies and to articulate the deepest needs of both men and women. Mecca is based on the life of a reclusive widow named Helen Martins, who was a sculptor in the small town of New Bethesda. The local people regarded her as crazy. Fugard sees her situation as a paradigm for the life of any creative artist in a hostile environment. The action of this concise play is psychological: the characters' suffering and conflict lead them to new insights into their lives. In the play Helen, who is in her late sixties, loves Elsa Barlow, a schoolteacher who is forty years younger, because Elsa can appreciate Mecca, Helen's carefully decorated home and her statues. Despite the difference in their ages, the two women have a lot in common. Both are rebels against social conventions: Elsa teaches radical material to her black students, and Helen's exotic artwork defies the traditional pieties of Afrikaner life. Both women are childless and seek self-fulfillment outside of conventional motherhood. Both women have black friends and sympathize with Patience, the widowed black woman with a baby whom Elsa finds walking alone across the Karoo. Helen has summoned Elsa to New Bethesda from Cape Town because the artist is depressed: she feels alone and unable to complete her work. Helen needs Elsa to renew her faith in herself. Elsa is not just Helen's best friend: she is Helen's ideal audience as well. Although Elsa and Helen are the main characters, Byleveld enters at the end of Act One and is present for most of Act Two. He wants to persuade Helen to retire to his church's home for the elderly. He is in the play to test the relationship between the two women and to test Helen's ability to make decisions for herself. Fugard maintains the suspense for most of Act Two. Marius, jealous of Elsa's intimacy with Helen, tries to make Elsa feel like an ignorant and intrusive outsider who does not understand the Karoo and the traditions of its Afrikaner people. He uses the pronouns and our to refer solely to the local white population, excluding Elsa. constantly reminds Elsa that she is younger, is of British descent, and lacks a rural perspective. Elsa fights back by asking him about the level of satisfaction of the black people in the Karoo (43). Her questions undermine Marius's exclusive categories. Fugard also undermines Marius's snobbism by having the minister admit that he has spent only twenty years in the Karoo himself (46). Marius's best argument is that Helen and he are contemporaries who have been friends for a long time. makes his strategy of isolating Elsa most clear when he says of the Karoo, It is my world--and Helen's--and we can't expect an outsider to love or understand it as we do (43). These strategies implicitly question the basis of the friendship between Helen and Elsa. When Elsa leaves the room, begins to question Helen directly about the women's relationship, which he views as a threat to his friendship with Helen. Just as attempts to subdue Elsa, he also tries to manipulate Helen rhetorically. He launches into long monologues, giving her very little time to respond to his scolding and cajoling. When Helen gently reprimands him, Marius . . . please . . . please can I talk for a little bit now? (51), he keeps interrupting her, making it hard for her to focus her thoughts and confront him. …