Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
August Wilson: A Life

August Wilson: A Life

Hartigan, Patti

Paperback

Entertainment & Performing ArtsBiographies GeneralLiterary Figures

Publisher Price: $21.99

ISBN10: 1501180673
ISBN13: 9781501180675
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: Aug 27 2024
Pages: 544
Weight: 1.15
Height: 1.50 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
The masterful (The Wall Street Journal), invaluable (Los Angeles Times) first authoritative biography of August Wilson, the most important and successful American playwriting of the late 20th century, by a theater critic who knew him.August Wilson wrote a series of ten plays celebrating African American life in the 20th century, one play for each decade. No other American playwright has completed such an ambitious oeuvre. Two of the plays became successful films, Fences, starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis; and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, starring Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman. Fences and The Piano Lesson won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Fences won the Tony Award for Best Play, and years after Wilson's death in 2005, Jitney earned a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. Through his brilliant use of vernacular speech, Wilson developed unforgettable characters who epitomized the trials and triumphs of the African American experience. He said that he didn't research his plays but wrote them from the blood's memory, a sense of racial history that he believed African Americans shared. Author and theater critic Patti Hartigan traced his ancestry back to slavery, and his plays echo with uncanny similarities to the history of his ancestors. She interviewed Wilson many times before his death and traces his life from his childhood in Pittsburgh (where nine of the plays take place) to Broadway. She also interviewed scores of friends, theater colleagues and family members, and conducted extensive research to tell the absorbing, richly detailed (Chicago Tribune) story of a writer who left an indelible imprint on American theater and opened the door for future playwrights of color.

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