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August Wilson (né Frederick August Kittel Jr.; April 27, 1945 – October 2, 2005) was an American playwright. He has been referred to as the "theater's poet of Black America". [1]
Sep 28, 2024 · August Wilson (born April 27, 1945, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died October 2, 2005, Seattle, Washington) was a playwright who penned an acclaimed cycle of plays, each set in a different decade of the 20th century, about Black American life.
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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...
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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...
Aug 16, 2023 · In her riveting biography August Wilson: A Life, Patti Hartigan, an award-winning theatre critic and former arts reporter for the Boston Globe, gives the first full account of what Wilson achieved—and a sense of what he still might have done were his life not cut tragically short.
August Wilson, one of America's greatest playwrights and the author of an epic cycle of dramas about the African-American experience in the 20th century, died Sunday, Oct. 2, the AP reported ...
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Oct 3, 2005 · Following a background report, a look back at the life of award-winning playwright August Wilson, with actor Anthony Chrisholm, who performed in six of Wilson's plays, and Kenny Leon, who...
