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
generate mental running
We are running out of energy, mental energy, ... We need to generate something new, for ourselves.
man song taught written
When you look at a fellow, if you taught yourself to look for it, you can see his song written on him. Tell you what kind of man he is in the world.
bags blacks carry given home informed might mother paper presence purchases stolen
When blacks made purchases in any store, they weren't given paper bags; instead, they had to carry out their purchases without a bag. If my mother had informed us of these things, it might have lessened her authoritarian presence in the world. Or, she might have come home one day to find me with hundreds of paper bags that I might have stolen somewhere.
ambiguous black folks nowhere presence register segregated white
to register the ambiguous presence of white folks in a segregated black world -- the way you see them nowhere and feel them everywhere.
black condition definition expected fact preference speak talk
You have to make your own definition of yourself. That's crucial. When I do interviews, I am expected to become some sociologist. I have to speak to the condition of black America. My preference would be: Let's talk about theater. Let's talk about art. The fact that I am black is self-evident.
america blacks forget slavery wrong
Blacks in America want to forget about slavery -- the stigma, the shame. That's the wrong move. If you can't be who you are, who can you be? How can you know what to do? We have our history. We have our book, which is the blues. And we forget it all.
black locked mostly wrong
Black actors are mostly locked out of the house, and there is something dreadfully wrong with that,
black class expertise failed gained middle past resources return society
To my observation, the black middle class has failed to return the expertise and sophistication and resources that they've gained in American society over the past 50 years back to the community,
enjoy expression human kinds musical spirit
I don't have a musical background. But I do enjoy all kinds of music. It's an expression of the human spirit that illuminates our humanity.
imagination imagined robust
I have a robust imagination and I have imagined for myself many things,
anyone aspects black deeper inside modeled voices
Some are from deeper inside than others, but they're all different aspects of my personality, I suspect. They're not modeled after anyone that I know. They are voices of the black community.
belly burst butcher capacity churches city claws dared devoured dream europe funeral hard honest hospitals immigrants itself limited man money near nourished offered sewing shops solid tenacious thousand turn until won
Near the turn of the century, the destitute of Europe sprang on the city with tenacious claws and an honest and solid dream. The city devoured them. They swelled its belly until it burst into a thousand furnaces and sewing machines, a thousand butcher shops and bakers' ovens, a thousand churches and hospitals and funeral parlors and money lenders. The city grew. It nourished itself and offered each man a partnership limited only by his talent, his guile and his willingness and capacity for hard work. For the immigrants of Europe, a dream dared and won true.
daddy gonna hands looked older seen sitting staring time
Many is the time I looked at my daddy and seen him staring off at his hands. I got a little older I know what he was thinking. He sitting there saying, "I got these big old hands but what I'm gonna do with them?
cattle former good poems series stage suggested turn wrote
In 1977, I wrote a series of poems about a character, Black Bart, a former cattle rustler-turned-alchemist. A good friend, Claude Purdy, who is a stage director, suggested I turn the poems into a play.