August Wilson - Pulitzer Prize Winning American Playwright

August Wilson

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August Wilson was born Frederick August Kittel to Daisy Wilson, an African American whose parents came from North Carolina, and Frederick Kittel, a red-haired baker who emigrated from Bohemia, Germany at 10.

August Wilson is the most influential and successful African American playwright writing today. He is the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author of Fences, The Piano Lesson, King Hedley II, Ma Rainy's Black Bottom, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Seven Guitars, Two Trains Running, Jitney and Radio Golf. His plays have been produced all over the world. (April 27, 1945—October 2, 2005)

Wilson's singular achievement and literary legacy is a cycle of ten plays—two of which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama—dubbed "The Pittsburgh Cycle". Each is set in a different decade, depicting the comedy and tragedy of the African-American experience in the 20th century. "This cycle," notes the theater critic Christopher Rawson, "is unprecedented in American theater for its concept, size, and cohesion." The plays are listed, in order of period covered, below:

1990s

Radio Golf (2005)
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Paperback: 120 pages
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group (December 30, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1559363088

"The concluding work in one of the most ambitious dramatic projects ever undertaken . . . a play that could well be Mr. Wilson's most provocative."—Ben Brantley, The New York Times

"Radio Golf is a rich, carefully wrought human tapestry that is colorful, playful, thoughtful and compelling."—Ed Kaufman, The Hollywood Reporter

Radio Golf is August Wilson's final play. Set in 1990 Pittsburgh, it is the conclusion of his Century Cycle-Wilson's ten-play chronicle of the African American experience throughout the twentieth century-and is the last play he completed before his death. With Radio Golf Wilson's lifework comes full circle as Aunt Ester's onetime home at 1839 Wylie Avenue (the setting of the cycle's first play) is slated for demolition to make way for a slick new real estate venture aimed to boost both the depressed Hill District and Harmond Wilks' chance of becoming the city's first black mayor. A play in which history, memory, and legacy challenge notions of progress and country club ideals, Radio Golf has been produced throughout the country and will come to Broadway this season.

August Wilson's plays include Gem of the Ocean, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars, Fences, Two Trains Running, Jitney, King Hedley II, and Radio Golf. They have been produced at theaters across the country, on Broadway, and throughout the world

1980s

King Hedley II (2001)
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Paperback: 103 pages
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group (July 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 155936260X

"Wilson's melody here is the mournful sound of what might have been, a blues-tinged tale about a driven, almost demonic man. He's a petty thief named King who will stop at nothing for a better life. . . . King Hedley is a big play, filled with big emotions and big speeches. These aria-like monologues are rich in humor, heartbreak and the astonishing details that go into creating real people. With his latest arrival on Broadway, Wilson only has the first and last decades of the twentieth century to chronicle-it's been quite a journey. King Hedley will only add to that towering achievement."—Michael Kuchwara, Associated Press

King Hedley II is the eighth work in playwright August Wilson's 10-play cycle chronicling the history of the African American experience in each decade of the twentieth century. It's set in 1985 and tells the story of an ex-con in post-Reagan Pittsburgh trying to rebuild his life. Many critics have hailed the work as a haunting and challenging tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

1970s

Jitney (1983)
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Paperback: 96 pages
Publisher: Overlook TP (January 15, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1585673706

The seventh in Wilson's intended 10-play cycle of works depicting African-American culture during each of the decades of the 20th century, JITNEY is set in Pittburgh's Hill District during the 1970s. The lives of jitney chauffeurs are dramatized against the larger backdrop of the famous black neighborhood. The 2000 New York Production of JITNEY won Wilson--already a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner--the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best play.

1960s

Two Trains Running (1990)
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Hardcover: 99 pages
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group (September 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1559363037

Laurence Fishburne, Foreword

Set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh in 1969.

"What does it mean to be American? What does it mean to be African American? The work of August Wilson posits an answer by arguing that the African influence is inseparable from and essential to the American experience. Two Trains Running, set at the end of the ‘60s Black Power movement, tackles that question with the zeal and virtuosity of a master at the height of his powers."—Laurence Fishburne

"These characters are fully imagined—they live…reeling out stories about there past, their angers, their dreams."—Washington Post

1950s

Fences (1985) - Pulitzer Prize
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Paperback: 94 pages
Publisher: Plume (October 30, 1988)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0452260094

The author of the 1984-85 Broadway season's best play, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, returns with another powerful, stunning dramatic work that has won him new critical acclaim and the Pulitzer Prize. The protagonist of Fences, Troy Maxson, is a strong man, a hard man. He has had to be—to survive. For Troy Maxson has gone through life in an America where to be proud and black was to face pressures that could crush a man, body and soul. But now the 1950s are yielding to the new spirit of liberation in the 1960s... a spirit that is changing the world Troy Maxson has learned to deal with the only way he can...a spirit that is making him a stranger, angry and afraid, in a world he never knew and to a wife and son he understands less and less...

1940s

Seven Guitars (1995)
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Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: Plume (August 1, 1997)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0452276926

It is the spring of 1948. In the still cool evenings of Pittsburgh's Hill district, familiar sounds fill the air. A rooster crows. Screen doors slam. The laughter of friends gathered for a backyard card game rises just above the wail of a mother who has lost her son. And there's the sound of the blues, played and sung by young men and women with little more than a guitar in their hands and a dream in their hearts.

August Wilson's Seven Guitars is the sixth chapter in his continuing theatrical saga that explores the hope, heartbreak, and heritage of the African-American experience in the twentieth century. The story follows a small group of friends who gather following the untimely death of Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton, a local blues guitarist on the edge of stardom. Together, they reminisce about his short life and discover the unspoken passions and undying spirit that live within each of them.

1930s

The Piano Lesson (1989) - Pulitzer Prize
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Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: Plume (December 1, 1990)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0452265347

Drama in two acts by August Wilson, produced in 1987 and published in 1990. The play, which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1990, is part of Wilson's cycle about African-American life in the 20th century. The action takes place in Pittsburgh in 1936 at the house of a family of African-Americans who have migrated from Mississippi. The conflict centers around a piano that was once traded by the family's white master for two of the family's ancestors. Boy Willie and Berniece, the siblings who inherit the piano (carved to show family history), argue about whether or not to sell it. Berniece's climactic refusal to allow Boy Willie to move the piano exorcises both the literal and figurative ghost of the white slave owner who has been haunting the family. —The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

1920s

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1982) - set in Chicago
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Paperback: 112 pages
Publisher: Plume (April 24, 1985)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0452261139

NY Drama Critics Circle Award

The time is 1927. The place is a run-down recording studio in Chicago. Ma Rainey, the legendary blues singer, is due to arrive with her entourage to cut new sides of old favorites. Waiting for her are her black musician sidemen, the white owner of the record company, and her white manager. What goes down in the session to come is more than music. It is a riveting portrayal of black rage . . . of racism, of the self-hate that racism breeds, and of racial exploitation . . .

"The play's themes are not new to the stage . . . the black American search for identity . . . and the process by which any American sells his soul for what Arthur Miller calls the salemean's [sic] dream. Mr. Wilson's style, however, is all his own. . . . He has lighted a dramatic fuse that snakes and hisses through several anguished eras of American life. When the fuse reaches its explosive final destination, the audience is impaled by the impact."

1910s

Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1984)
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Paperback: 94 pages
Publisher: Plume (October 30, 1988)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0452260094

NY Drama Critics Circle Award

When Harold Loomis arrives at a black Pittsburgh boardinghouse after seven years' impressed labor on Joe Turner's chain gang, he is a free man—in body. But the scars of his enslavement and a sense of inescapable alienation oppress his spirit still, and the seemingly hospitable rooming house seethes with tension and distrust in the presence of this tormented stranger. Loomis is looking for the wife he left hehind, believing that she can help him reclaim his old identity. But through his encounters with the other residents he begins to realize that what he really seeks is his rightful place in a new world—and it will take more than the skill of the local "People Finder" to discover it. . . .

1900s

Gem of the Ocean (2003)
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Paperback: 85 pages
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group (July 17, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1559362804

Gem of the Ocean is the play that begins it all. Set in 1904 Pittsburgh, it is chronologically the first work in August Wilson's decade-by-decade cycle dramatizing the African American experience during the 20th century-an unprecedented series that includes the Pulitzer Prize-winning plays Fences and The Piano Lesson. Aunt Esther, the drama's 287-year-old fiery matriarch, welcomes into her Hill District home Solly Two Kings, who was born into slavery and scouted for the Union Army, and Citizen Barlow, a young man from Alabama searching for a new life. Gem of the Ocean recently played across the country and on Broadway, with Phylicia Rashad as Aunt Esther.

Earlier in 2005, on the completion of the final work of his ten play cycle-surely the most ambitious American dramatic project undertaken in our history-August Wilson disclosed his bout with cancer, an illness of unusual ferocity that would eventually claim his life on October 2. Fittingly the Broadway theatre where his last play will be produced in 2006 has been renamed the August Wilson Theater in his honor. His legacy will animate the theatre and stir the human heart for decades to come.