Born Frederick August Kittell, April 27, 1945 in Pittsburgh, PA; son of Frederick August Kittel (a baker) and Daisy Wilson (a housekeeper); married Brenda Burton, 1969 (divorced, 1972); married Judy Oliver (a social worker), 1981 (divorced); married Constanza Romero (costume designer), 1988; children: Sakina Ansari (with Burton); Azula (with Romero). After his father’s death in 1965, Frederick Kittel Jr became August Wilson, a decision made to honour his mother. Born Frederick August Kittel, Jr in Pittsburgh in 1945, as the fourth of seven children, August Wilson grew up in the impoverished Bedford Avenue area of the city. He then decided to write one play for each decade of the twentieth century. 16 Oct. 2020
Wilson devoted himself to helping black people know their roots in order to help them understand themselves, and his plays demonstrate the black struggle to gain this understanding—or escape from it. King Hedley II was first seen in the fall of 1999 at the Pittsburgh Public Theater and made it to Broadway in the summer of 2001, playing for twelve weeks. Like all of Wilson's characters, Maxson is a complex man who, while having moral lapses, also worked hard to provide for his family. The Piano Lesson perhaps best expresses Wilson's view of black history as something to be neither sold nor denied, but employed to create an ongoing, nurturing cultural identity. Virtually all of his characters end up singing the blues to show their feelings at key moments during his plays. Offended by the affront to his integrity and bored with the stifling regimentation of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, first produced at Yale Repertory Theater, 1986; produced on Broadway at Barrymore Theatre, March, 1988. Worked as a sheet-metal worker, porter, toy-store stock worker, gardener, dishwasher, and short-order cook; published poems in Black World and Black Lines, 1971-72; co-founded Black Horizons on the Hill (theater comapny), Pittsburgh, PA, 1968; wrote scripts for Science Museum of Minnesota. In quick succession he left three schools: Central Catholic High School, where as the only black student in his grade he was subjected to abuse; Connelley Vocational High School, which had low academic standards; and Gladstone High School, where a history teacher incorrectly believed that a paper he submitted had been written by one of his older sisters. At first he read the Nancy Drew mysteries his mother managed to buy for the family, but by age 12 he was a regular at the local library. A year earlier Wilson set up the Black Horizon Theater with Rob Penny where his first plays, Recycling and Jitney, were performed. In Joe Turner, set in 1911, a man searches for his long-lost wife and for his own identity, making a trip that mirrors southern blacks’ mass migration to the North. He moved to Seattle in the early 1990s, where he has remained remarkably focused on his play writing. https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/wilson-august, "Wilson, August Ma Rainey”s Black Bottom, first produced at Yale Repertory Theater, New Haven, CT, 1984; produced on Broadway at Cort Theatre, October, 1984. King Hedley II, first produced at Pittsburgh Public Theater, 1999. The play Fences evolved from his seeing an image of a man holding a baby, and Joe Turner's Come and Gone from the depiction of a struggling mill hand in a collage by acclaimed black painter Romare Bearden, whom Wilson has cited as a particularly strong influence on his work. Wilson struck gold with Fences, which hit Broadway while Joe Turner was still playing there.
Encyclopedia.com. in ten days of writing while sitting in a fish-and-chips restaurant, Wilson finished a draft of Jitney, a play set in a gypsy-cab station. Interestingly, Wilson often introduces characters in his plays that become the main characters in subsequent plays. . Wilson's Seven Guitars hit Broadway in 1995, reuniting him with longtime collaborator Richards.
(October 16, 2020). New York Times, October 22, 1984, p. C12; April 15, 1990, pp. Obituaries are in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and New York Times (both 3 Oct. 2005). Publications: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, 1985; Fences, 1986; Joe Turner's Come and Gone, 1988; The Piano Lesson, 1990; (author of pref.) Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004.
"August Wilson." Blacks' cultural response to the world is contained in blues." ." He discovered the blues, which, along with the painter and collagist Romare Bearden, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, and the political playwright Amiri Baraka, Wilson frequently acknowledged as having inspired his writing. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2003. The story involves the efforts two black businessmen as they struggle to navigate the political and economic challenges for the construction of a new commercial development. The character, King Hedley II is an ex-con who returns home and must deal with his past as well as figure out how to go “ligit.” King Hedley II was first seen in the fall of 1999 at the Pittsburgh Public Theater and made it to Broadway in the summer of 2001, playing for twelve weeks. https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/wilson-august-1945-0, Decker, Ed; Minderovic, Christine "Wilson, August 1945– I took the stuff and ran with it.". In Seven Guitars King Hedley was "a cracked old man who sees ghosts" and becomes obsessed with fathering a child, a "new Messiah." “It’s like our culture is in the music. He has also served as spokesperson and promoter for the publicity-shy Wilson, and as the father he never had. The American theater community publicly mourned his passing. In 1979, Wilson wrote Jitney, which he considered his first real play. At first he read the Nancy Drew mysteries his mother managed to buy for the family, but by age 12 he was a regular at the local library. "Wilson, August The Wilson Family YMCA is one of the original YMCA branches in the CSRA. The plays he wrote from this point on typically contain wide assortments of African Americans—including ex-convicts, hustlers, musicians, truth tellers, and hardworking folk—some of whom appear in more than one play in his cycle. It was produced on Broadway in 1992 and won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. August Wilson 1869 1926 August Wilson, 1869 - 1926. I’m struggling to get the next play down on paper.” Though the lives of many of his characters are bleak, he also has maintained a degree of optimism about the situation of people of color in the United States. Purdy urged Wilson to write a play and Wilson felt more ready than ever before.
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