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2 unusual facts about August Wilson


African-American neighborhood

Playwright August Wilson used the term "ghetto" in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984) and Fences (1987), both of which draw upon the author’s experience growing up in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, first a neighborhood of early European immigrants, then a black ghetto.

Charley Burley

An exhibit at the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum at Pittsburgh's Senator Heinz History Center states that Burley was the model for the character Troy in August Wilson's play Fences.


Carmen Munroe

The plays were Walk Hard, written by Abram Hill and directed by Nicholas Kent, followed by Gem of the Ocean, written by August Wilson and directed by Paulette Randall, where Munroe acted in the role of Aunt Esther Tyler, and finally Lynn Nottage's Fabulation, directed by Indhu Rubasingham.

Lloyd Richards

Among Richards' accomplishments are his staging the original production of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, debuting on Broadway to standing ovations on 11 March 1959, and in 1984 he introduced August Wilson to Broadway in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.

Providence Black Repertory Company

Mainstage productions have included plays by Amiri Baraka, Aisha Rahman, Athol Fugard, Federico García Lorca, Harold Pinter, Sam Shepard, Cheryl West, María Irene Fornés, and August Wilson, as well as original stage adaptations of the poetry of Langston Hughes and Kevin Young (poet).

Talented 10th

From Talented Tenth and Preaching With Sacred Fire, Sho Baraka delved into books such as The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, and The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, along with various works by authors such as Phyllis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, August Wilson, and C. S. Lewis.


see also

Anthony Chisholm

He is a Tony Award Nominee (Best Supporting Actor in a play, in the role of Elder Joseph Barlow in August Wilson's Radio Golf).

Claude Melnot Wilson

In August, Wilson tallied six more wins, starting with an Albatros reconnaissance plane destroyed in cooperation with fellow aces Arthur Reed and Henry Coyle Rath on the 8th.

Israel Hicks

Lloyd Richards, who directed several of Wilson's plays on Broadway, was a mentor to Hicks at NYU and introduced him to the works of August Wilson.

Radio Golf

Geva Theatre Center in Rochester, New York produced the play in March 2011 and is the first theatre to produce all ten plays in decade order as "August Wilson's American Century."