Wilson, August (1945-2005), was a leading African American playwright. His major work is a cycle of 10 plays that traces the black experience in America. The cycle consists of a play set in each decade of the 1900’s. Wilson’s powerful narratives are noted for their humor and dialogue, blending lively, colloquial phrases and poetic monologues.
In 1987, Wilson won a Pulitzer Prize for Fences (1985), a play about the struggles in 1957 of a black sanitation worker earlier denied a chance to play major league baseball. He won a second Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for The Piano Lesson (1987). In this drama, set in 1936, a brother and sister disagree over whether to sell or keep the family heirloom, a richly carved piano that is a symbol of the family’s heritage of slavery. Both works are typical of Wilson’s blend of the realistic with the fantastic or mystical.
The first play in Wilson’s cycle was Jitney (1982), which describes the struggle of black taxi drivers in 1971. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984), Wilson’s first success, shows white promoters exploiting black recording artists in 1927. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1986) tells of an embittered black man’s search for his wife in 1911. The allegorical Two Trains Running (1990), set in 1969, focuses on characters in a restaurant discussing their fate.
Seven Guitars (1995) is set in 1948 and describes the tragic life of a black blues guitarist. King Hedley II (2000) is set in 1985 and tells the grim story of an ex-convict trying unsuccessfully to build a better life for himself. Gem of the Ocean (2003) is set in 1904 and centers on a 287-year-old former slave. Radio Golf (2005) takes place in 1997 in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a common setting for Wilson’s plays. Wilson was born on April 27, 1945, in Pittsburgh. His given name was Frederick August Kittel, but he legally changed it to Wilson, his mother’s maiden name, after he decided to become a writer. Wilson died on Oct. 2, 2005. He is the only African American dramatist to have a Broadway theater named in his honor.
