August Wilson, RIP

By Justin Sondak in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 3, 2005 12:18PM

The theater world lost a giant yesterday. Playwright August Wilson died of liver cancer in a hospital near his Seattle home, just a few weeks after publicly acknowledging his fatal diagnosis. Widely hailed as one of the greatest American playwrights of the 20th century, Wilson created rich, intimate, and unparalleled stage portraits of the African-American experience.

Wilson was raised in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, at the time a poor and segregated inner-city neighborhood. The area would be the backdrop for nine of the ten plays in his “Pittsburgh cycle,” each work examining African-American life in a different decade of the 20th century. His characters confront the scars of slavery and segregation while sorting out issues of manhood, family, and aspiration. Wilson wrote an impressive array of quality roles for black actors and ruffled feathers in the theater world by standing against the fashionable trend of “color blind” casting, insisting that his plays were about black culture and black characters to be played solely by black actors.

Over the past twenty years, The Goodman Theatre had been Wilson’s home away from home. The company has produced almost the entire play cycle (his final show Radio Golf will be produced in a future season), drawing an enviable cabal of talent including James Earl Jones in a pre-Broadway engagement of Fences, Charles S. Dutton in The Piano Lesson, and Paul Taylor in Jitney. Chicago audiences also enjoyed the world premiere of familial drama Seven Guitars. And when the Goodman opened their new Dearborn Street building, Wilson’s King Hedley II inaugurated the Albert Theater.

Chicagoist extends condolences to August Wilson’s family and friends and the millions of theater professionals mourning his passing.