Category: people

“To say that Wilson was the greatest African American playwright the nation has produced — as some inevitably do — is to limit the scope of his significance as a contributor to the country’s dramatic heritage.”

“Wilson stands alongside the foremost 20th century American dramatists, Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. Though some may argue that Wilson never wrote a play as great as “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” “Death of a Salesman” or “A Streetcar Named Desire,” his finest works, “Fences,” “The Piano Lesson” and “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” have become pillars of modern American drama.”

“Reading through Wilson’s cycle play-by-play today, there’s lots to enjoy and reflect on, but ultimately something exhausting and even programmatic in them, something forced and repetitive, although few critics say so. Reading the reviews of the early, more realistic plays, you would think that they stand alongside the masterpieces of the great American playwrights of the 20th century, or of the great playwrights of any century. At least one review compared Wilson to Chekhov. At their worst, Wilson’s plays are overly preoccupied by history. Wilson was a necessary playwright. His best work describes a world that few theater audiences had seen, and it punches holes in common wisdom about race.”

“Jonathan Ferrara was a gallery owner, an innkeeper and a colorful and driving force in New Orleans’ up-and-coming visual arts scene. Hurricane Katrina wiped that canvas nearly clean, and it left Ferrara – a man who has gone about life in bold brushstrokes since graduating from Towson High School 20 years ago – unsure what to do next…”

Samuel Thompson survived Hurricane Katrina with little more than the violin that is his professional livelihood. He became famous after a photographer took a picture of him playing for victims at the Superdome. The Massachusetts woman who made Thompson’s instrument was glad to see her instrument…

“Soft-spoken, easygoing, and modest, August was the least grandiose and least arrogant artist imaginable to achieve something so big. You might expect the man who could envision and create a 10-play cycle illustrating African American life in the 10 decades of the 20th century to be haughty, self-demonstrating, full of pronouncements about the high meanings of his work. That was not August’s way.”

“People talk about an artist having an eye. But with playwrights, it’s the ear that counts. Mr. Wilson had a peerless pair. His writing comes closer to the sweep of Shakespearean music than that of any of his contemporaries.”

“He inspired a generation of black theater artists. And he will be greatly missed by many who knew him, in Seattle and beyond, as a generous friend and remarkable storyteller.”

“This period of time will ultimately be characterized by the work of the playwrights who gave voice to the American experiences that are not from the Anglo European tradition … playwrights such as David Hwang, Philip Kan Gotanda, Nilo Cruz and others. But August’s work will tower above all. He turned cultural history into dramatic poetry. You have to look back to the Henry cycle of Shakespeare to find a similar artistic accomplishment.”

“Wilson cared passionately about black theater as a distinct medium, and in the late 1990s he famously wrangled with Robert Brustein, then artistic director of American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., who claimed that theater should be ‘a unifying, not a segregating, medium.’ In 1997 the two men held a public debate in New York, and Wilson continued to argue that ‘colorblind’ casting — casting without regard to race — is ‘an aberrant idea’ and that blacks should not allow others to dictate their culture.”