Mr. Wilson is one of my favorite playwrights. He wrote plays for every decade of the 20th century that would chronicle some part of the black experience in America. Through the use of his great ear for dialogue, Wilson was able to give us some insight into the daily life, both struggles and triumphs, of an assortment of universal characters that his audience could easily recognize. In 2005, August Wilson completed a ten-play cycle that is now being recorded to be enjoyed by future generations.
Tickets are sold out for just about all the live performances at the tiny Greene Space Theatre in NYC, however, the plays can be viewed online via webcast. I thoroughly enjoyed “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” a few days ago. True, the actors sit in seats in front of microphones, but they were so good and August Wilson’s stories are so compelling, that the imagination kicks in and provides the scenery and action. (For those of you not old enough to remember, we did this during radio programs all the time back in the day:)
“The Piano Lesson” is next on Monday 9/9/13 at 7PM EDT. The Greene Space site has a calendar of events, actor lists, etc.
August Wilson’s American Century Cycle
The Greene Space, 44 Charlton Street, New York, NY
- 1900s – Gem of the Ocean (2003)
- 1910s – Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1984)
- 1920s – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1982)
- 1930s – The Piano Lesson (1986) – Pulitzer Prize
- 1940s – Seven Guitars (1995)
- 1950s – Fences (1985) – Pulitzer Prize
- 1960s – Two Trains Running (1990)
- 1970s – Jitney (1982)
- 1980s – King Hedley II (2001)
- 1990s – Radio Golf (2005)
BTW – the recordings are done in the order that the plays were written, not in chronological order as listed above