The Pittsburgh Tatler: In the lobby of the August Wilson house you can read a letter that Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company’s founder and artistic director Mark Clayton Southers wrote to August Wilson in 2002, describing his intent to establish a theater in Pittsburgh that would offer Black audiences stories that spoke to their history and lived experience.
2 comments:
With respect to the idea that a theatre-goer can offer just as much (if not more) relevant literary criticism than a person who studies plays on a page, I fully agree. An immersive experience is integral to nourishing a full understanding of a play, as it's decidedly the most important thing you can do to actually fully comprehend the gravity (and sometimes hilarity) of important scenes in plays. It would also be interesting to see how specific August Wilson plays differ in different theatre companies—other than PPTC being so well-organized and expansive in terms of running August Wilson plays, does it have any advantages when conceptualizing these shows other than the experience of having run the plays (or others like them) before? Also, does the PPTC partner with the August Wilson house to garner support for the productions and raise awareness toward issues that, as we see in August Wilson's cyclical plays, remain ingrained in U.S. society even after fights for equality?
I’m very grateful for artists like August Wilson for his dedication to real stories and Mark Clayton Southers for his dedication to Wilson’s stories. As someone who talks about being from the Pittsburgh area and how much I love the city, I find Wilson’s telling of inequity and struggle in the community to be essential and beneficial. He conveys incredibly moving stories that I can connect with a city I love, but a neighborhood I’d never spent much time in. I was really hoping to see PPTCO’s production of these two stories, but I missed my chance, so in some ways I appreciate the opportunity to learn about its great impacts, and in others I feel like I missed out as I learn about such great productions. I’ve always thought it was interesting that you could visit August Wilson’s home, and I’m really fascinated with the idea of setting a production of Fences in his backyard. I definitely missed out on some great productions, but I’m glad to hear that August Wilson’s works are still being appreciated and committed to by a great company.
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