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Sep 28, 2024 · August Wilson was a playwright who penned an acclaimed cycle of plays, each set in a different decade of the 20th century, about Black American life. He won Pulitzer Prizes for two of them: Fences and The Piano Lesson. Learn more about Wilson’s life and works in this article.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Introduction. August Wilson was an award-winning American playwright. He wrote plays about the Black experience in America. Early Life. August Wilson’s original name was Frederick August Kittel. He was born on April 27, 1945, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He grew up in a lively, but poor neighborhood called the Hill District.
Wilson's mother raised the children alone until he was five in a two-room apartment behind a grocery store at 1727 Bedford Avenue; his father was mostly absent from his childhood. Wilson later wrote under his mother's surname.
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- August Wilson’s Childhood
- August Wilson’s Artistic Development
- August Wilson’s Century Play Cycle
- August Wilson’s Legacy
- August Wilson Timeline
Wilson’s rise from humble beginnings to Broadway was unlikely. Born Frederick August Kittel on April 27, 1945, in the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, he was the son of Daisy Wilson, an African-American cleaning woman, and Frederick Kittel, a German immigrant and baker who was mostly absent from Wilson’s life. His mother raised Wilson and his...
Wilson had begun writing plays — one a musical western — before relocating to Minneapolis. There he was given a fellowship to the Minnesota Playwrights Center, which led to his acceptance into the National Playwrights Conference at the O’Neill Theater Center in Connecticut. During the conference — an intense collaboration of artists testing new wor...
Wilson’s greatest contribution to American culture would be his defining 10-play cycle, one for each decade of the past century. All but one — Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom— set in the city of Pittsburgh: 1900: Gem of the Ocean (2002) 1910: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1986) 1920: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984) 1930: The Piano Lesson (1989) 1940: Seven ...
In the late 90s, with a career spanning nearly two decades, Wilson married his third wife, costume designer Constanza Romero. The two had a daughter and moved to Seattle, WA, where Wilson continued to work on the last plays in the cycle. In June 2005, Wilson was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. He died Sunday, October 2, 2005, in a Seattle hos...
April 27, 1945– Frederick August Kittel is born in Pittsburgh, PA, in the city neighborhood known as “The Hill.” The Hill is Pittsburgh’s Harlem, a hub of creativity and commerce, and in 1945, still racially mixed. His mother, Daisy Wilson, was African-American, while his father, a German immigrant named Frederick Kittel, was white. He is one of se...
Jan 24, 2024 · Quick Facts. FULL NAME: Frederick August Kittel. BIRTHDATE: April 27, 1945. BIRTHPLACE: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. DEATH: October 2, 2005. SPOUSE: Constanza Romero (m. 1994-2005), Judy Oliver (m....
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Biography. 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.
