August Wilson
" Born on April 27, 1945, Wilson grew up in a workingclass area of Pittsburgh. His father, a GermanAmerican baker, abandoned the family when his son was only five. Wilson’s mother remarried and the family moved to a mostly white suburb. Fed up with racial indignities, he dropped out of school at sixteen and his real education started, so he has stated, in the local library. In 1968 he was a cofounder of Black Horizons Theater Company, though his artistic voice at the time was expressed in poetry. In 1978 he moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he wrote his first major play, Jitney. A subsequent play,Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, submitted to the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, came to the attention of Lloyd Richards, then artistic director of the Yale Repertory Theater. Richards helped Wilson refine the play, which then opened in 1984 in New Haven. Hailed as the work of an important new playwright, the play came to Broadway later that year, and marked the start of an astonishing career—including two Pulitzers (Fences and The Piano Lesson) and a number of Drama Desk Awards, as well as a Tony Award for works that include Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Two Trains Running, Seven Guitars, and King Hedley II." -The Paris Review, Bonnie Lyons and George Plimpton
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/839/the-art-of-theater-no-14-august-wilson
Works:
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/839/the-art-of-theater-no-14-august-wilson
Works:
- Recycle, 1973 (produced in Pittsburgh, PA)
- Fullerton Street, 1980
- Black Bart and the Sacred Hills, 1977 (produced St. Paul, 1981)
- Jitney (1982)
- Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984)
- The Homecoming, 1989
- Fences (1987) - Pulitzer Prize[6]
- Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1984)
- The Coldest Day of the Year, 1989
- The Piano Lesson (1990) - Pulitzer Prize[6]
- Two Trains Running (1991)
- Seven Guitars (1995)
- King Hedley II (1999)
- How I Learned What I Learned (2002–03, Seattle)
- Gem of the Ocean (2003)
- Radio Golf (2005)