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
art clues focus happening inside listen music particular period reason society today wellspring
I don't look at our society today too much. My focus is still in the past, and part of the reason is because what I do - the wellspring of art, or what I do - l get from the blues. So I listen to the music of a particular period that I'm working on, and I think inside the music is clues to what is happening with the people.
school
I dropped out of school when I was 15 years old. I dropped out because I guess I wasn't getting anything out of my investment in the school.
audience painted particular people picasso satisfy work
I don't write for a particular audience. I work as an artist, and I think the audience of one, which is the self, and I have to satisfy myself as an artist. So I always say that I write for the same people that Picasso painted for. I think he painted for himself.
fullness learned life rendered richness
From Romare Bearden I learned that the fullness and richness of everyday life can be rendered without compromise or sentimentality.
fascinated hugo napoleon power submitted teacher title victor written
I had always been fascinated with Napoleon because he was a self-made emperor; Victor Hugo said, 'Napoleon's will to power,' and it was the title of my paper. And I submitted it to my teacher, and he didn't think I had written it. And he wanted me to explain it to him.
eleven fear last left niro picked scorsese
I'm a De Niro fan. I went eleven years without seeing a movie; the last one before that, February 1980, was De Niro and Scorsese in 'Raging Bull,' and when I went back, it was 'Cape Fear,' with De Niro and Scorsese. I picked up right where I left off at.
black past rejecting
assimilation that black Americans have been rejecting for the past 380 years.
fire hard home particular rehearsal room sitting
I think that if I'm at home sitting doing the rewrite, I'm going to write something different than if I'm there in the rehearsal room doing it. It's kind of hard to explain, but if you're tossed into the fire at any particular moment, then you are going to write something different than you will in another particular moment. And that is from day to day.
truly
I think it is an extraordinary honor, and it is truly a capstone of my career. I am overwhelmed.
starting
It ain't nothing to find no starting place in the world. You just start from where you find yourself.
easy five gets hammer hundred order pay pound regardless relatively rewriting since store three words
Regardless of the medium, rewriting and more rewriting is still necessary. No one gets anything right the first time, and since I don't write with a hammer and chisel, it's relatively easy for me to change. It's just words on paper. Words are free. You don't go to the store and order a pound of words, or five hundred words, and pay your three dollars. They're free.
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?'
confess history
I have to confess that I'm not a big movie person. I don't go to a lot of films. And I don't know very much about the history of stage-to-film adaptations.
fits woman
I need a woman that fits in my hand.