R.I.P. August Wilson

Knew it was coming.

So very sad.

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RIP indeed. The Piano Lesson is one of my all-time favorite plays.

ugh....horrible news.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051002/ap_en_ot/obit_wilson

I think FENCES is superior to THE PIANO LESSON, but America has lost a truly great voice in the theater.

"May flights of angels sing him to his rest"

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Updated On: 10/2/05 at 06:44 PM

He will definitely be missed. Such an inspiration and an important figure in my Theater courses back in college.

Do any of you know if he had other projects in mind at the time he learned that his disease was inoperable?

Well, the 10th play of the cycle RADIO GOLF will be playing Seattle Rep beginning in January, I believe. Not sure if it's coming directly to Broadway after that or not (though, I would imagine so since his death obviously precludes any further changes to the text or further workshopping).

He also was working on his first post-cycle play for Signature Theatre prior to his illness and it's scheduled to be part of their season (from what I've read, it was something of a departure for him and different from the cycle plays; I believe it is a comedy set in contemporary times). Not sure what the status of it is or whether he deemed it ready to be produced or "finished" (probably not, knowing his perchant for constant rewrites). We'll see if he left instructions for Signature to go ahead with producing it or not.

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Updated On: 10/2/05 at 06:59 PM

RIP.

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Oh no, this is awful. I too hoped he would be around at least for the dedication of his theatre. The Pittsburgh Public Theatre is doing Gem of the Ocean this season, now I know I'll never be able to sit through it without crying. What an amazing talent. Mr. Wilson, you will be missed.

Reading The Piano Lesson helped open me up to reading plays in general, and I'll never forget watching Gem of the Ocean. Thank you, Mr. Wilson, for your art.

So incredibly sad.

Has anyone else read August Wilson's editorial piece about Robert Judd? It's an incredible story. And Wilson describes Judd as "a black man on Broadway, reclaiming his moral personality, making his own rules in which the depravation of opportunity did not exclude the highest of possibilities". These are certainly words that describe Wilson himself, an incredible man and an incredible artist. He will be dearly missed.

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Few playwrights have maintained such a high level of quality across so many years of virtually constant productivity. And at his very best, Wilson achieved a poetic, almost visionary kind of speech for his characters that is VERY hard to make work onstage; I'm thinking here especially of Joe Turner's Come And Gone, which I think may be the real masterpiece of the cycle and which enjoyed a virtually perfect Broadway production (the only reason it didn't win the Tony was because it was up against the even more dazzling M. Butterfly). What a great, great talent he had, and how wisely he used it!

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