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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 ] He is best known for a series of 10 plays, collectively called The Pittsburgh Cycle (or The Century Cycle ) , which chronicle the experiences and heritage of the African-American community in the 20th century.
Nov 17, 2023 · Summary Transcript. Our series Full Bio returns, and this month we are focusing on the life of pioneering playwright August Wilson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice, and whose plays focus on the life of Black Americans in the 20th century. Biographer Patti Hartigan joins us for a deep dive into her book, August Wilson: A Life.
Nov 4, 2019 · August Wilson, who searingly portrayed the African-American experience in the 20th century in an epic ten-play cycle, died Oct. 2 in his city of residence, Seattle. He was 60. The cause of death ...
- Wilson 101. August Wilson is an American playwright best known for his unprecedented cycle of 10 plays that chronicle the 20th century African-American experience.
- The Century Cycle. Wilson explores a century’s worth of African-American struggle and triumph in his plays, beginning with the complex narrative of freedom at the turn of the century (Gem of the Ocean) and ending with the assimilation and sense of alienation of the 1990s (Radio Golf).
- The Hill District. All, but one, of Wilson’s plays— Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom— are set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, the economically depressed neighborhood where Wilson was born in 1945 and spent his early years.
- Pulitzer Prizes. Two of Wilson’s plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama— Fences(1987) and The Piano Lesson(1990). (Photo: James Earl Jones and Mary Alice in Fences.
- 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...
Apr 8, 2001 · On April 1, 1964, Wilson walked into downtown Pittsburgh to McFerron’s typewriter store and put twenty dollars on the counter for a heavy black Royal Standard in the window. He’d earned the ...
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Aug 16, 2023 · August Wilson, a two-time Pulitzer winner who ranks among America’s greatest playwrights, died in October 2005 at the age of 60. Though by the time of his death he had completed his American Century Cycle (a.k.a. the Century Cycle or the Pittsburgh Cycle), with one play for each decade of the 20th century, there lingered a sense that not only ...
