August Wilson is Dead

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I almost started a thread about a month ago when I read that he had liver cancer and only expected to live about a month more -- accurate prediction, as it turns out. He died yesterday.

When "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" debuted, I had spent years watching a local character named Richie play pick-up basketball in Minneapolis -- he was one of those playground kings, amazing. He could take off from the free throw line and make the basket -- I don't remember dunks, but I remember amazing leaps.

Richie was (I am fairly sure he died, young), August Wilson's half brother. He was totally proud of him, couldn't quite believe it. That was my introduction to August Wilson, before I'd read any of his plays. So he was always someone I was rooting for, from the beginning of his career.

Then I read them. I'd love to see one, but I've only read them. Amazing stuff.

I love the idea of his cycle of 10 plays for every decade of the 20th centure, love that he accomplished that feat before he died. (Only 60...)

New York Times obituary:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/03/theater/newsandfeatures/03wilson.html

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/10/02/obituaries/03wilson.1843.jpg

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Oh, how sad. He was a wonderful writer.

I hope you get to see some of his plays, soz. I've seen a few and read all but two or three of the most recent ones.

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August Wilson is probably my favorite American playwright. I think I've seen all of his plays except Joe Turner's Come and Gone (which I somehow let get away when it was on Broadway), and I count them among the most sublime theater-going experiences I've ever had.

Actors must have loved acting in his plays, because he wrote such great roles for them: in Gem of the Ocean, which had a brief run on Broadway last season, Phylicia Rashad gave a performance that almost literally took my breath away. (The fact that Gem of the Ocean almost didn't make it to Broadway at all, because the producers had trouble raising money, and then closed after only a couple of months, says all you need to know about the sorry state of Broadway these days.)

This week's Village Voice includes a tribute to Wilson written by Michael Feingold. As usual, Feingold (in my opinion, the best theater critic in New York) is right on target with this description of Wilson's plays:

His is an epic of people, in which the grand historical movements of the larger world are not preached upon but reflected through the lives of distinct, graspable individuals, usually in an enclosed space: a boardinghouse parlor, a recording studio, a modest front yard, a corner diner. The world is vast and beyond our control, but the humans in it live for individual needs, within a constantly evolving cultural pattern. This dynamic tension between history and the individual is reflected in the plays' aesthetic tension, for though each of them has the superficial look of a traditional well-made play, each of them is really a free-flowing river of poetic impressions and musings, a point often lost on those who mistake August for (or would have liked him to be) a conventional Broadway realist. What he was really about was what all great tragic poets are about: the transfiguration of reality.

Here's a link to the complete Village Voice article.

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Wow, what a great article, made even better by the fact that Feingold knew Wilson personally.

Thanks bree.

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The Virginia Theater, on Broadway, has been re-named the August Wilson Theater. Here are some excerpts from the New York Times article about last night's re-naming ceremony:

On a blustery night when most of Broadway was dark, August Wilson's name was finally ablaze in lights, as the Virginia Theater was officially renamed yesterday evening for the playwright amid cheers along West 52nd Street.

The Wilson is the first Broadway theater to be named for an African-American, and it puts the playwright's name among the likes of the playwright Eugene O'Neill, the actors Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, and the composer George Gershwin.

Charles S. Dutton, who performed in two of Mr. Wilson's Broadway productions - "The Piano Lesson" (1990) and "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" (both 1984 and 2003) - performed a monologue by the playwright, about a black minister dancing for his life in a racist Southern town. With a tear running down his cheek, the actor then thanked Mr. Wilson for "his canon," a body of dramatically potent work that Mr. Dutton said demanded "that you leave an ounce of your internal essence on the stage floor every night."

"If one has to go, that's the way to go: to finish a mammoth task," Mr. Dutton said. "We are so lucky."

The full article is at

Virginia Theater Takes a New Name: August Wilson

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There's a tribute to August at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta tonight. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow.

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Looking forward to it, eoe.

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Great writing by Mr. Feingold.

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Thanks for the link about renaming The Virginia to The August Wilson theatre, bree.

My favorite line:

"We finally succeeded in making the Great White Way a little less white." Excellent!!

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August Wilson is Dead

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