August Wilson Research Paper

August Wilson was a famous African- American playwright. “August Wilsons original name was Fredrick August Kittel born April 27, 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.” ( The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica) Wilson was one of six children. Mother Daisy Wilson, who was of the African-American heritage was married to father German immigrant Fredrick Kittel. August Wilsons original name was Fredrick August Kittel but then changed after his father’s death in 1965 leaving Wilson to be a 20-year-old adopted the pen name of “August Wilson “. August Kittel Wilson was a Playwright who wrote a cycle of plays each set in a different decade of the 20th century. August Kittel Wilson won Pulitzer Prizes for both the famous play Fences and The Piano Lesson.

He won the Pulitzer Prize for The Piano Lesson following its Broadway premiere. The piano lesson was about a set in the 1930s and explores a family’s ambivalence about selling an heirloom A collection of Wilson’s works entitled Three plays by August Wilson, this play was published in book form in 1991. The following year brought the Broadway premiere of Two Trains Running, which was produced in the 1990s and takes place in a coffeehouse in the 1960s. In 1994, Wilson married his third wife, Constanza Romero, a costume designer. Seven Guitars, a is set among a group of friends who reunited in 1948 following the death of a local blues guitarist, made its way to the Broadway stage two years later, in 1995, making it the seventh play in the cycle. The Seven Guitars follows after the birth of Wilsons and Romero’s daughter, Azula, in 1997. ( www.TheBiography.com

Another subsequent play in the series is Gem of the Ocean, which was premiered on Broadway in 2004 and produced in 2003, this play takes place in 1904 and centers on Aunt Ester, a 287-year-old spiritual healer mentioned in previous plays, consequently a man who seeks her help. The play Gem of the Ocean made a run of 72 performances. Wilson ended the cycle with the play Radio Golf, first produced in 2005 and was set in the 1990s. The play is concerned the fate of Aunt Ester’s house, which is slated to be torn down by real-estate developers. (www.britannica.com) On October 2, 2005 August Wilson died of liver cancer and in Seattle, Washington. His new play, Radio Golf, had opened in Los Angeles, California, just a few months before he