August Wilson
August Wilson
August Wilsonwas an American playwright whose work included a series of ten plays, The Pittsburgh Cycle, for which he received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Each is set in a different decade, depicting the comic and tragic aspects of the African-American experience in the 20th century...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth27 April 1945
CityPittsburgh, PA
CountryUnited States of America
anyone aspects black deeper inside modeled voices
Some are from deeper inside than others, but they're all different aspects of my personality, I suspect. They're not modeled after anyone that I know. They are voices of the black community.
writing play black
. . . what happened, of course, was that I was writing a play set in the 1940's that was supposed to be somehow representative of black American life, and I didn't have any women in there. And I knew that wasn't going to work.
thinking people black
I think that's the core of black aesthetics: the ability to improvise. That is what has enabled our [black people's] survival.
thinking black literature
My greatest influence has been the blues. And that's a literary influence, because I think the blues is the best literature that we as black Americans have.
black custodians situation
Blacks have traditionally had to operate in a situation where whites have set themselves up as the custodians of the black experience.
bags blacks carry given home informed might mother paper presence purchases stolen
When blacks made purchases in any store, they weren't given paper bags; instead, they had to carry out their purchases without a bag. If my mother had informed us of these things, it might have lessened her authoritarian presence in the world. Or, she might have come home one day to find me with hundreds of paper bags that I might have stolen somewhere.
ambiguous black folks nowhere presence register segregated white
to register the ambiguous presence of white folks in a segregated black world -- the way you see them nowhere and feel them everywhere.
black condition definition expected fact preference speak talk
You have to make your own definition of yourself. That's crucial. When I do interviews, I am expected to become some sociologist. I have to speak to the condition of black America. My preference would be: Let's talk about theater. Let's talk about art. The fact that I am black is self-evident.
black class expertise failed gained middle past resources return society
To my observation, the black middle class has failed to return the expertise and sophistication and resources that they've gained in American society over the past 50 years back to the community,
america blacks forget slavery wrong
Blacks in America want to forget about slavery -- the stigma, the shame. That's the wrong move. If you can't be who you are, who can you be? How can you know what to do? We have our history. We have our book, which is the blues. And we forget it all.
black locked mostly wrong
Black actors are mostly locked out of the house, and there is something dreadfully wrong with that,
black bringing experience giving life space stage
I write for myself, and my goal is bringing that world and that experience of black Americans to life on the stage and giving it a space there.
black past rejecting
assimilation that black Americans have been rejecting for the past 380 years.
black feeling men plays shut society
My plays are talky; I say shut up and listen. They are about black men talking, and in American society you don't too often have that because the feeling is: 'What do black men have to say?'