Posted on Apr 17, 2022
Walk into August Wilson's life and plays in immersive new exhibit
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https://www.npr.org/2022/04/17/ [login to see] /walk-into-august-wilsons-life-and-plays-in-immersive-new-exhibit
Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson, who died in 2005, is one of the prides of Pittsburgh - yet until this week, there has been no site in his hometown where fans could go to experience the breadth of his legacy as a chronicler of the Black American experience through his monumental, 10-play Century Cycle.
Now there's "August Wilson: The Writer's Landscape," a permanent immersive and interactive exhibition at – where else? – Pittsburgh's August Wilson African American Cultural Center. The center, which opened in 2009, is located just a half-mile from the brick rowhouse that was Wilson's own first home, in the historically Black neighborhood called the Hill District.
Wilson only lived in Pittsburgh until 1978, before moving to St. Paul, Minn., and then Seattle, but the city he grew up in continued to inform his work for the rest of his life.
"It was important to have a site where people could walk and immerse in August Wilson's work, learn about his influences, learn about how he worked and why he did the things that he did, why he wrote about specific topics in a specific way," said Center executive director Janis Burley Wilson, who oversaw the four-year project from start to finish. .
Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson, who died in 2005, is one of the prides of Pittsburgh - yet until this week, there has been no site in his hometown where fans could go to experience the breadth of his legacy as a chronicler of the Black American experience through his monumental, 10-play Century Cycle.
Now there's "August Wilson: The Writer's Landscape," a permanent immersive and interactive exhibition at – where else? – Pittsburgh's August Wilson African American Cultural Center. The center, which opened in 2009, is located just a half-mile from the brick rowhouse that was Wilson's own first home, in the historically Black neighborhood called the Hill District.
Wilson only lived in Pittsburgh until 1978, before moving to St. Paul, Minn., and then Seattle, but the city he grew up in continued to inform his work for the rest of his life.
"It was important to have a site where people could walk and immerse in August Wilson's work, learn about his influences, learn about how he worked and why he did the things that he did, why he wrote about specific topics in a specific way," said Center executive director Janis Burley Wilson, who oversaw the four-year project from start to finish. .
Walk into August Wilson's life and plays in immersive new exhibit
Posted from npr.org
Culture
Theater
Pittsburgh
St. Paul
Seattle
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Wilson only lived in Pittsburgh until 1978, before moving to St. Paul, Minn., and then Seattle, but the city he grew up in continued to inform his work for the rest of his life.
"It was important to have a site where people could walk and immerse in August Wilson's work, learn about his influences, learn about how he worked and why he did the things that he did, why he wrote about specific topics in a specific way," said Center executive director Janis Burley Wilson, who oversaw the four-year project from start to finish. .
"Writer's Landscape" consists of 13 separate walk-through installations. Ten are devoted to the works in the Century Cycle, each of which is set in a different decade of the 20th century. The plays explore the damage wrought by racism as well as the resilience and triumphs of Black Americans. Most spotlight working-class characters like trash collectors ("Fences"), recent migrants from the agricultural South ("The Piano Lesson"), blues musicians ("Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," "Seven Guitars"), mill workers ("Gem of the Ocean"), and unlicensed cab drivers ("Jitney").
All 10 plays made it to Broadway; "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson" won Pulitzers. And all but one of the plays are set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, where Wilson partly grew up and then came of age as a young man. The installations feature Wilson's personal effects along with costumes props and furniture from productions of the plays, including a 1956 Rock Ola jukebox from the 1990 Broadway staging of "Two Trains Running." There are also short videos about each play, with historical context and dialogue performed by the actors like Phylicia Rashad and Ruben Santiago-Hudson. Another installation honors Wilson's autobiographical monologue, "How I Learned What I Learned."
Two other sections in the exhibit summon his writing life. One recreates Eddie's Restaurant, a now-vanished haunt of Wilson's in the 1960s and '70s; Wilson, famously, did a lot of writing in diners. The other immerses visitors in his home office, complete with big writing wooden desk, books, and favorite blues records on vinyl – all donated by his wife, Constanza Romero-Wilson, from the couple's residence in Seattle, where Wilson lived the final 15 years of his life."...
..."Wilson only lived in Pittsburgh until 1978, before moving to St. Paul, Minn., and then Seattle, but the city he grew up in continued to inform his work for the rest of his life.
"It was important to have a site where people could walk and immerse in August Wilson's work, learn about his influences, learn about how he worked and why he did the things that he did, why he wrote about specific topics in a specific way," said Center executive director Janis Burley Wilson, who oversaw the four-year project from start to finish. .
"Writer's Landscape" consists of 13 separate walk-through installations. Ten are devoted to the works in the Century Cycle, each of which is set in a different decade of the 20th century. The plays explore the damage wrought by racism as well as the resilience and triumphs of Black Americans. Most spotlight working-class characters like trash collectors ("Fences"), recent migrants from the agricultural South ("The Piano Lesson"), blues musicians ("Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," "Seven Guitars"), mill workers ("Gem of the Ocean"), and unlicensed cab drivers ("Jitney").
All 10 plays made it to Broadway; "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson" won Pulitzers. And all but one of the plays are set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, where Wilson partly grew up and then came of age as a young man. The installations feature Wilson's personal effects along with costumes props and furniture from productions of the plays, including a 1956 Rock Ola jukebox from the 1990 Broadway staging of "Two Trains Running." There are also short videos about each play, with historical context and dialogue performed by the actors like Phylicia Rashad and Ruben Santiago-Hudson. Another installation honors Wilson's autobiographical monologue, "How I Learned What I Learned."
Two other sections in the exhibit summon his writing life. One recreates Eddie's Restaurant, a now-vanished haunt of Wilson's in the 1960s and '70s; Wilson, famously, did a lot of writing in diners. The other immerses visitors in his home office, complete with big writing wooden desk, books, and favorite blues records on vinyl – all donated by his wife, Constanza Romero-Wilson, from the couple's residence in Seattle, where Wilson lived the final 15 years of his life."...
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