If you don’t know who August Wilson is, you need to. He’s the most notable playwright ever born in Pittsburgh. His Pittsburgh cycle is a series of ten plays that captures the spirit and cadence of African -American life during each decade of the twentieth century. And he’s the only person ever to receive his high school diploma from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
According to Contemporary Authors on infotrac, “Wilson felt his real education began when he was 16.” Before he entered high school, he grew up in a 2-room apartment in mixed race community in the Hill District where people accepted one another. But that ended when he, his mother and five siblings moved to Hazlewood.
He entered Central Catholic High School in 1959 as the only African-American student in the prestigous school. He was left notes everyday that said something like ,”Go home, Nigger.” Large groups of guys waited to fight him after school and his principal often sent him home on a taxi. What the principal didn’t know, Wilson has said, is those same guys waited for him in the mornings. “I got in a lot of fights, ” he said in Conversations with August Wilson.
He left Central Catholic to study auto mechanics at Connelly School but that class was full so he ended up making tin cups in metal sheeting. Half the day was spent in classes at the fifth grade level. Feeling unchallenged, Wilson transfered to Gladstone High School.
When a teacher accused him of having his sisters write a term paper he did on Napoleon, Wilson walked out. He spent the next two weeks playing basketball outside the principal’s office. He later admitted he hoped someone would come out of the school to see why he was there. No one ever did.
Wilson began educating himself at the Carnegie Library. He sent poems to black publications at the University of Pittsbugh which published them. Eventually he wrote plays that received a Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award and more.
The reason I’m writing about August Wilson, other than his life makes a remarkable story, is because The August Wilson Center for African-American Culture recently opened and several of his plays are being performed during this week and next. Here’s the schedule: http://www.augustwilsoncenter.org/events/index.php
Although you can read his plays, I hightly recommend seeing them. They’re not to everyone’s liking but I love their poetry, their mystical, mythical spiritualism coupled with down-to-earth characters living in historical times.
If you want to read some August Wilson for yourself, here’s a few of his plays:
Fences set in 1997
Jitney set in 1977
The Piano Lesson set in 1936
Filed under: CLP - Beechview, Plays, Uncategorized | Tagged: african-american, august wilson, pittsburgh, Plays, theater
