For the St. Louis American
August Wilson – author of “Gem of the Ocean,” “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” “Ma Rainey’s Blackbottom,” “The Piano Lesson,” “Seven Guitars,” “Fences,” “Two Trains Running,” “Jitney,” “King Hedley II” and “Radio Golf” – was the most prolific American playwright of our generation. His plays inspired and provided work for an entire generation of artists in the American theatre.
Wilson received a Tony Best Play award for “Fences” and six other Best Play Tony nominations. He received the Pulitzer Prize for “Fences” and “The Piano Lesson” and a record seven New York Drama Critics Awards.
Though his work has been produced in regional theaters all over the country and on Broadway, it has been in black theatres all over the country where a new generation of young actors have cut their teeth on Wilson’s work.
The Black Repertory Company, which I founded and where I serve as producing director, has produced seven of the 10 plays that Wilson wrote as part of his dramatic cycle depicting the African-American experience during the 20th century. Of those seven plays, I had the pleasure of acting in three of them and directing one. I will appear this spring (February 8-March 5, 2006) as Stool Pigeon in “King Hedley II.” We are scheduled to produce the last two plays in the cycle within the next two years.
In St. Louis, the Black Rep has become known as the theatre to produce August Wilson’s work.
In 1989 the larger regional theatre in town produced Wilson’s most commercially successful play, “Fences.” After that, I often struggled with licensing agents who would hesitate to give us the rights to produce his plays because they wanted to hold them for the larger theatre.
I met August Wilson one year at the Eugene O’Neill Conference in Connecticut and told him about this struggle. He gave me his phone number and told me from then on to just call him.
I remember him as a big man in stature with a quiet way about him, always with a story to tell and an experience to share. I was at the Theatre Communications Group’s conference when August gave his keynote address, “The Ground on Which I Stand,” that shook the American theatre as much or more than his plays had at that time.
I last saw August this past June at the TCG conference, where he signed a copy of his play “King Hedley II” for me:
To Ron
The struggle continues
August Wilson June 05
We spoke briefly about the theatre. I mentioned that we were close to finishing the cycle, and he said he was, too. We smiled and shook hands.
August Wilson died on October 2, 2005. The theatre community all expected it after his recent announcement that he had liver cancer, but we were hoping to get together as a community once again before he passed.
On October 16, The Virginia Theatre on Broadway will be renamed in his honor. It was at the Virginia Theatre where I saw “King Hedley II” on opening night, May 1, 2001, with a cast that included my good friends Stephen McKinley Henderson and Charlie Brown; it also featured Brian Stokes Mitchell, Leslie Uggams, Viola Davis and Monte Russell.
There is an event planned for October 23 at what will then be the August Wilson Theatre on Broadway, to thank August for his cycle of plays and, now, to eulogize him.
“Before one can become an artist, one must first be. It is being in all facets, its many definitions, that endows the artist with an immutable sense of himself that is necessary for the accomplishment of his task,” Wilson wrote.
“Simply put, art is beholden to the kiln in which the artist was fired.”
Ron Himes is founder and producing director of The Black Rep and the Henry Hampton Artist-in-Residence at Washington University.
