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Feb 5, 2015 · August Wilson’s seminal cycle of 10 plays covers African-American history in the 20th century, with all but one set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, where Wilson grew up. This “Century Cycle”...
Plays in the series include Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990), both of which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) and Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988). In 2006, Wilson was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame .
Apr 23, 2024 · August Wilson was a playwright who penned an acclaimed cycle of plays, each set in a different decade of the 20th century, about Black American life. He won Pulitzer Prizes for two of them: Fences and The Piano Lesson. Learn more about Wilson’s life and works in this article.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- 'Jitney' (Set in 1977; Premiered in 1982) As Wilson tells the story, taxis wouldn’t go into the Hill District in the 1970s, so the community had to depend on jitneys, unlicensed cabs.
- 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' (Set in 1927; Premiered in 1984) A fictional story about a real woman, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom was the only play in The Cycle set in Chicago.
- 'Joe Turner's Come and Gone' (Set in 1911; Premiered in 1984) Inspired by Romare Bearden's Mill Hand's Lunch Bucket painting, which was set in a boarding house and showed an abject man sitting in defeat, Wilson reimagined him in Joe Turner's Come and Gone.
- 'Fences' (Set in 1957; Premiered in 1987) The best known of Wilson's plays, Fences presents the hardness a man develops after his athletic talents and opportunity for a better future are wasted because of racism; only years later, he's forced to confront his son who wants to pursue a similar path in a different time.
Jan 28, 2015 · August Wilson (1945 – 2005) was an award-winning American playwright whose work illuminated the joys and struggles of the African-American experience in the United States during the 20th...
Jan 24, 2024 · Early Life and Education. Plays: 'Fences, 'The Pittsburgh Cycle,' 'The Piano Lesson' Death. Personal Life. Who Was August Wilson? Famed playwright August Wilson wrote his first play,...
Apr 17, 2022 · Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson, who died in 2005, is one of the prides of Pittsburgh - yet until this week, there has been no site in his hometown where fans...
