Penumbra

August Wilson
(April 27, 1945-October 2, 2005)

August Wilson grew up in the Hill District of Pittsburgh. His childhood experiences in this predominately African American community informed his dramatic writing. Wilson's singular achievement and literary legacy is a cycle of 10 plays dubbed "the Century Cycle." Each is set in a different decade, depicting the comedy and tragedy of the African American experience in the 20th century, "a device," Charles Whittaker of Ebony wrote, "that has enabled Wilson to explore, often in very subtle ways, the myriad and mutating forms of the legacy of slavery." Wilson's project became more than 10 poetic plays. The cycle is a metronome of American culture, reflecting the buried heartbeat of an experience parallel to the mainstream. These are snapshots of life in a country that has both celebrated and scorned black people. The entire album is the story of our nation. "This cycle," notes The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's theater critic Christopher Rawson, "is unprecedented in American theater for its concept, size and cohesion."

Called "one of the most important voices in the American theater today," by Mervyn Rothstein in The New York Times, August Wilson's authentic-sounding characters have brought a new understanding of the black experience to audiences around the country. Wilson's work gives audiences the opportunity to go back and reexamine American history through characters that are epic, poignant and defiantly struggling against the institutionalized legacy of racism in this country.

"In Wilson's dramas characters repeatedly return to their history in order to move on with their lives and into the future. Wilson delves into and rewrites the African American past, addressing and righting the wrongs of historical amnesia and social oppression, ritualistically reconnecting African Americans to the blood memories and cultural rites of the African past. For him, black people are not tangential to the central motion of history. He places them at the centre of his attention."

Harry J. Elam, Jr.
In his essay "Gem of the Ocean and the Redemptive Power of History," from The Cambridge Companion to August Wilson. Ed. Christopher Bigsby. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

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