Anton Robert Krueger is a South African playwright, poet, academic, and literary scholar. His work includes drama, poetry, memoir, fiction, criticism, performance, and film, while his research focuses on identity, South African theatre, consciousness, spirituality, and creative practice.
Background
Anton Robert Krueger was born on September 28, 1971, in Phalaborwa, South Africa, to Dietrich Ludwig Krueger and Ingrid Marie Hoffmann. Phalaborwa is a mining and tourism town in Limpopo associated with the copper industry and the surrounding Lowveld region.
His professional identity developed across literary scholarship, creative writing, theatre, music, photography, and film. He has written in several genres and has also published under a number of pseudonyms, reflecting the range of his literary and performance activities.
Education
Krueger studied at the University of Pretoria, completing a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1993, a Bachelor of Arts with honors in 1995, and a Doctor of Literature degree in English. His doctoral research examined representations of identity in new South African drama after apartheid. The University of Pretoria, founded in 1908, is a major South African research university whose humanities traditions include English literary studies and theatre research.
He completed a Master of Arts in English at the University of South Africa in 2000. UNISA is a large distance-learning university founded in 1873 and has played a significant role in expanding access to higher education across South Africa. His master's research addressed science, narrative, and postmodernism, while his later doctoral work concentrated on South African drama and identity.
Career
Krueger began his teaching career as a lecturer in communications at Technikon in Pretoria from 1998 to 1999. Technikon institutions formed part of South Africa's system of vocational and technologically oriented higher education before their incorporation into universities of technology in the early twenty-first century.
From 2000, he lectured in the English department at Midrand Graduate Institute in South Africa. The institution provided private higher education in business, humanities, and related fields during the period in which Krueger was developing his academic and creative career.
Krueger later joined Rhodes University, where he worked in drama and literary studies and became an associate professor and head of department. Rhodes University, founded in 1904 in Grahamstown, now Makhanda, is a South African research university known for humanities, journalism, and literary scholarship. His research and teaching have addressed South African literature and performance, representations of consciousness, artificial intelligence and spirituality, memoir, performance poetry, orality, improvisation, and mindfulness in creativity.
His scholarly book Experiments in Freedom: Explorations of Identity in New South African Drama was published in 2010 and examined identity formations in post-apartheid English-language play texts. He co-edited Magnet Theatre: Three Decades of Making Space in 2016 and has published scholarly articles, book chapters, reviews, poetry, drama, fiction, and memoir. His plays have been staged in South Africa and internationally, and he has also written and directed short films and contributed music to theatrical projects.
Krueger has reviewed theatre and literature for South African newspapers and literary outlets, including the Mail & Guardian, Sunday Independent, Business Day, Daily Maverick, and The Sunday Times. His arts journalism received a Silver Medal from the Business and Arts South Africa awards in 2017. He has participated in Poetry Africa and the National Arts Festival, including work as an associate curator for theatre and live art.
Krueger's play Living in Strange Lands: The Testimony of Tsafendas received nominations for the FNB Vita Award and was recognized in South African theatre for its treatment of the historical figure Dimitri Tsafendas.
Krueger's play Mediocrity won the SANCTA festival and was selected to represent South Africa at the Mondial du Théâtre in Monaco in 2001.
Krueger's play Chatter won the PANSA Gauteng Festival of Staged Reading in 2007.
Krueger's scholarly and creative work has been published and performed across multiple genres, including drama, poetry, memoir, fiction, literary criticism, music, photography, and film.
(A scholarly study of identity formations in English-langu...)
2010
Religion
Krueger is Buddhist. His poetry and public creative work engage with mindfulness, compassion, consciousness, and the relationship between individual identity and the wider social world.
Buddhism is a religious and philosophical tradition originating in ancient India and centered on the cultivation of ethical conduct, mental discipline, insight, and freedom from suffering. In Krueger's documented interests, Buddhist ideas appear alongside reflections on creativity, performance, spirituality, and the search for meaning in contemporary life.
Views
Krueger's writing and research repeatedly examine identity as fluid, contested, and shaped through language, performance, memory, and social interaction. His scholarly work on post-apartheid drama considers how theatre represents gender, nationalism, ethnicity, syncretism, and race.
His poetry and creative work also reflect an interest in mindfulness, compassion, consciousness, and the relationship between private experience and public life. He has emphasized performance and oral exchange as forms of communal engagement, treating poetry not only as written text but also as an event created between performer and audience.
Membership
Krueger has been a member of the Modern Language Association and The English Academy. The Modern Language Association is an international scholarly organization supporting research and teaching in languages and literatures, while The English Academy of Southern Africa promotes the study and use of English in the region.
Member
Modern Language Association
,
United States
Member
The English Academy of Southern Africa
,
South Africa
Personality
Krueger has described his creative outlook in terms of amateurism, improvisation, openness, and engagement with audiences. Interviews and published profiles present him as an artist who moves between literary writing, performance, scholarship, music, and visual media.
Quotes from others about the person
A Rhodes University citation described Krueger's research and creative output as ranging across scholarly writing, play scripts, poetry, fiction, music, photography, and film. The citation characterized Experiments in Freedom as a rigorous study of identity in new South African drama.
Krueger plays classical guitar and has written music for theatrical productions. He has also performed poetry and improvisational work with musicians.
Connections
Krueger is the son of Dietrich Ludwig Krueger and Ingrid Marie Hoffmann. He married Louise de Visser on August 7, 2001.
Father:
Dietrich Ludwig Krueger
Mother:
Ingrid Marie Hoffmann
Spouse:
Louise de Visser
Married Krueger on August 7, 2001.
References
Anton Krueger — Rhodes University
Institutional biography documenting Krueger's academic position, research interests, scholarly and creative publications, awards, theatre work, poetry, and arts journalism.
Awarded for Experiments in Freedom: Explorations of Identity in New South African Drama, a scholarly study of identity formations in post-apartheid South African drama.
Awarded for Experiments in Freedom: Explorations of Identity in New South African Drama, a scholarly study of identity formations in post-apartheid South African drama.
Hiddingh-Currie Award,
South Africa
Awarded in connection with Magnet Theatre: Three Decades of Making Space, co-edited with Megan Lewis and devoted to the history and practice of the South African theatre company Magnet Theatre.
Awarded in connection with Magnet Theatre: Three Decades of Making Space, co-edited with Megan Lewis and devoted to the history and practice of the South African theatre company Magnet Theatre.
Silver Medal for Arts Journalism,
South Africa
Awarded by Business and Arts South Africa for Krueger's arts journalism in 2017.
Awarded by Business and Arts South Africa for Krueger's arts journalism in 2017.
Dalro Poetry Prize runner-up,
South Africa
Krueger was runner-up for the Dalro Poetry Prize for the poem or poetry sequence Nine Notes on Lisbon in 2011.
Krueger was runner-up for the Dalro Poetry Prize for the poem or poetry sequence Nine Notes on Lisbon in 2011.
