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
attitude character play
Blues is the bedrock of everything I do. All the characters in my plays, their ideas and their attitudes, the stance that they adopt in the world, are all ideas and attitudes that are expressed in the blues.
book needs
All you need is the blues. To me, the blues is the book, it's the bible, it's everything.
creativity thinking input
I think that as a playwright, if I detail that environment, then I'm taking away something from them [designers]. I'm taking away their creativity and their ability to have input themselves, not just to follow what the playwright has written. So I do a minimum set description and let the designers create within that.
life running responsibility
There are always and only two trains running. There is life and there is death. Each of us rides them both. To live life with dignity, to celebrate and accept responsibility for your presence in the world is all that can be asked of anyone.
impossible found hard
I found out life's hard but it ain't impossible....
lions may
I may be personable, but I assure you I am a lion.
writing ideas america
There's no idea in the world that is not contained by black life. I could write forever about the black experience in America.
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.
writing space giving
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.
papa used
You got to take the crookeds with the straights. That's what Papa used to say.
writing play support
If you want to support a writer, produce the first five plays he writes.
play white theater
As soon as white folks say a play's good, the theater is jammed with blacks and whites.
moving play historical
For me, the original play becomes an historical document: This is where I was when I wrote it, and I have to move on now to something else.
character play piano
I know some things when I start. I know, let's say, that the play is going to be a 1970s or a 1930s play, and it's going to be about a piano, but that's it. I slowly discover who the characters are as I go along.