Full Bio: August Wilson (Entire Interview)

Summary

All Of It with Alison Stewart

Full Bio: August Wilson (Entire Interview)

Date: November 18, 2023
Guest: Patti Hartigan, author of August Wilson: A Life
Host: Alison Stewart

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Overview

This episode presents an in-depth look at the life, artistry, and legacy of August Wilson—a towering figure in American theater—through a vibrant conversation with biographer Patti Hartigan. Focusing on Wilson's roots, personal struggles, historic contributions to theater, and the cultural resonance of his work, the discussion uses Hartigan’s exhaustive research to bring listeners inside Wilson’s world: his family stories, his creative motivations, his battles and triumphs both on stage and in broader culture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Family Origins and Early Influences

• Roots in North Carolina:
  Wilson’s family story starts on Speartops Mountain in North Carolina. The matriarchy, embodied by great-grandmother Sarah Ella Cutler, has both legendary and documented stories.

  “With that period of history, it's very hard to document...The story of Willard Justice being killed up there is absolutely true. That's documented...the scene that I paint at the very beginning of the book actually happened.”
  — Patti Hartigan [00:47]

• Ancestral Memory in Plays:
  Wilson drew from generational tales—writing "from the blood's memory," often honoring matriarchs he never knew personally.

  “He honored all the ancestors. He wrote from what he called the blood's memory...the matriarchs were very, very important to him.”
  — Patti Hartigan [01:55]

• Ties Between Family History and Characters: Patterns from Wilson’s past—like chain gangs and pianos left in wills—surface symbolically in his plays.

  “There was a Calvin listed in the list of enslaved people. In that same will, the owner left a piano to his daughter. And there's a play called the Piano Lesson.”
  — Patti Hartigan [02:47]

Pittsburgh’s “The Hill” and Racial Identity

• Setting as Character:
  The Hill District in Pittsburgh shaped Wilson, offering both a vibrant Black community and stories he’d later dramatize.

  "It was the kind of place in the 50s where everybody was an anti. All the women could yell at any kid if they caught them doing something wrong."
  — Patti Hartigan [03:59]

• Absent Father Figure:
  Wilson’s white father was rarely present and not a positive influence; surrogate father figures replaced him.

• Struggles with Identity and Racism:
  Despite his multiracial background, Wilson unequivocally identified as Black, and resisted efforts to define him differently.

  "He self-identified. Every human on the planet can choose to identify however they want, but people wouldn’t leave him alone about this."
  — Patti Hartigan [15:52]

  He targeted microaggressions and outright prejudice in schools, leading to his dropping out and self-education at the Carnegie Library.

  “I dropped out of school, but I did not drop out of life.”
  — August Wilson, quoted by interviewer [10:28]

The Making of a Writer

• Poetry & Autodidacticism:
  Wilson’s early poetry foreshadowed the lyricism of his dialogue. After leaving formal schooling, he devoured literature independently, especially Black writers.

  "He went to the Carnegie Library every day. And he read and read and read and read. He was a complete autodidact."
  — Patti Hartigan [10:32]

• Name Change as Rebirth:
  On the day of his father’s death, Wilson rechristened himself, reflecting a deep psychological and artistic turning point.

  “He changed his name on April 1, 1965. That was the day that his father passed. He never told anyone that was the day.”
  — Patti Hartigan [12:33]

• Early Struggles and Jobs:
  Supporting himself through odd jobs, he maintained his poetic identity, marking the territory between necessity and vocation.

Artistic Influences (“The Four Bs”)

• Romare Bearden, The Blues, Amiri Baraka, Borges:
  Wilson’s “Four Bs” shaped his dynamic narrative forms and commitment to centering Black culture.

  • Bearden:
    “The name of the play is taken from a Bearden collage...his whole world changed when he saw these images.”
    — Patti Hartigan [19:05]

  • The Blues (esp. Bessie Smith):
    “It was the music that spoke to him...while writing King Hedley II...he said the current generation had learned everything at the foot of the blues.”
    — Patti Hartigan [21:24]

  • Baraka:
    “He believed that art and culture could perhaps bring about social progress. And August Wilson and his friends had a theater called Black Horizons which was modeled after it.”
    — Patti Hartigan [22:31]

  • Borges:
    "He had read a story by Borges ... that used that technique of telling you what happens in the very first sentence. And then the mystery is, well, how did it get that way?"
    — Patti Hartigan [23:26]

Formation of Black Horizons Theater

• Grassroots Theater:
  Wilson and friends started Black Horizons, staging community-centered Black work with little professional experience but great passion.

  “They started this theater and none of them really knew what they were doing...Theater in the spirit.”
  — Patti Hartigan [24:14]

• Early Failures and Lessons Learned:
  His first plays (“Recycle,” “Black Bart and the Sacred Hills”) flopped, but these “musicals” and mixed-genre experiments steeled his perseverance.

Partnership with Lloyd Richards and The Birth of an American Cycle

• Eugene O'Neill Theater Center:
  The O’Neill became an artistic hothouse; after multiple rejections, Wilson’s play “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and his partnership with Lloyd Richards (a landmark Black director) propelled him to national attention.

  “He walked quietly. But when he said something, he had such gravitas...he was the Buddha.”
  — Patti Hartigan on Lloyd Richards [31:56]

• Regional Tryouts and Creative Growth:
  Richards invented a model—testing Wilson’s plays regionally—that allowed for enormous creative risk and refinement.

  “He didn’t like to cut his place until he saw them...so this particular method for him was great.”
  — Patti Hartigan [35:45]

• Tensions and Breakup:
  Their collaboration eventually fractured over creative control and new alliances, most dramatically during the making of “Seven Guitars”.

The Century Cycle: Chronicling Black Experience

• A Massive Undertaking:
  Wilson resolved to write one play per decade of the 20th-century African American experience—a vision with no precedent in American literature.

  “No other American playwright has ever done anything this ambitious...he was finishing this task on his deathbed.”
  — Patti Hartigan [41:59]

• Signature Styles:

  • Extended, poetic monologues (see: Viola Davis’s speech in “King Hedley II”) [44:34]
  • "Spectacle characters" (e.g., Gabriel in "Fences").
  • Supernatural elements tied to ancestral memory (e.g., Aunt Ester/Ancestor appearing throughout the cycle).

• Female Characters:
  Early criticism centered on Wilson’s female roles; Hartigan notes his women characters gained depth in later works.

  “They got more rounded, more...there was more to them as he wrote later...But I do understand the criticism, especially in the early plays.”
  — Patti Hartigan [47:30]

Actors and Theatrical Community

• The "Wilson Warriors":
  A company of actors, including Anthony Chisholm, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, and Viola Davis, who returned to his plays repeatedly.

• Fences — Triumph and Challenges:
  Fences won both the Pulitzer and Tony, with James Earl Jones at the center of on-set creative clashes.

  “James Earl Jones was pretty direct...he didn't like August Wilson and he said that August Wilson didn't like him either.”
  — Patti Hartigan [50:25]

• Insistence on Black Directors for Film:
  Wilson’s demand for Black directors (notably barring Fences’ early adaptation by Eddie Murphy) delayed a film version until Denzel Washington’s acclaimed adaptation in 2016.

  “He felt for this particular movie...to direct it, you had to be a member of the culture that it depicted.”
  — Patti Hartigan [54:33]

Impact, Legacy, and Activism

• The “Ground On Which I Stand” Speech (1996):
  At a national theater conference, Wilson directly confronted the systemic marginalization of Black playwrights and rejected “colorblind” casting as erasure.

  “There are and have always been two distinct and parallel traditions in black art. That is, art…to entertain white society and art that feeds the spirit and celebrates the life of black America...”
  — August Wilson (read by host) [65:58]

• Cultural Reception:
  The speech triggered shock, uproar, and a long, polarized debate in American theater, most publicly with critic Robert Brustein. Their “Town Hall” debate was billed as “the fight of the century,” though both men later reached conciliation.

  “It became about two public intellectuals sparring... it was really for show.”
  — Patti Hartigan [74:45]

• Persistent Barriers:
  Wilson did not see much genuine institutional change in theater during his lifetime, despite the pronouncements of progress.

  “August Wilson would have told you on the day he died that he hadn't seen any change.”
  — Patti Hartigan [78:05]

Personal Life and Legacy

• Family and Relationships:
  Wilson prioritized his work, sometimes at the cost of family life.

  “Yeah, the work comes first, family comes second.”
  — August Wilson (citing 60 Minutes interview) [61:15]

  He had three marriages and two daughters, Sakina Ansara (with Brenda Burton) and Azula Carmen (with Constanza Romero).

  “He truly cared about...his children. But again, the work came first, and it’s sort of...the price someone like that pays.”
  — Patti Hartigan [61:18]

• Final Years, Death, and Unfinished Dreams:
  Wilson was as ambitious at 60 (his age at death, days before Radio Golf reached Broadway) as ever, with plans for novels and other plays left unfulfilled.

• Impact Assessment:

  “He changed the American theater. He opened it up in a way that...should have been opened up before, but had not been. He wrote a record of stories.”
  — Patti Hartigan [85:14]

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Ancestral Presence:
  "He wrote from what he called the blood's memory...He worshiped his mother, Daisy Wilson. And he didn't know Zanya, but she represented the link to the past."
  — Patti Hartigan [01:55]

• On Perseverance:
  "He applied to the Eugene o' Neill Theater center five times, even sent the same play twice because he didn't think they had read it. And he just kept going."
  — Patti Hartigan [28:59]

• On Refusing to Compromise:
  "One thing you didn't do was tell August Wilson what to do with his plays...he turned the offer down...he wanted control of his work."
  — Patti Hartigan [37:40]

• On the Cycle's Significance:
  "No other American playwright has ever done anything this ambitious...he was finishing this task on his deathbed."
  — Patti Hartigan [41:59]

• On Audience Reception:
  "When there were moments...every single woman in the theater jumps to their feet and starts applauding. So they do have their moments."
  — Patti Hartigan, on women characters [48:59]

• On Debate and Racism in Theater:
  "You read that now and you think he actually had to say that. But, I mean, it was, in quotes, controversial."
  — Patti Hartigan [68:52]

• On the Cost of Genius:
  "He said he set the bar so high for himself. But, yeah, he would admit absolutely that the work came first."
  — Patti Hartigan [62:33]

• On Wilson's Legacy:
  "He wrote great plays that also chronicle the Black experience...the characters in his plays are not superheroes. They're regular people who did extraordinary things."
  — Patti Hartigan [85:14]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:47–03:59 — Family legacy, ancestral history, and influences
• 06:14–10:28 — Early education, stutter, racism, self-directed learning
• 12:33–14:42 — Name change, early poetic ambitions, and odd jobs
• 18:54–24:14 — Artistic inspirations (The Four Bs), early plays, and Black Horizons
• 28:54–35:45 — Struggles in theater, Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, Lloyd Richards partnership
• 37:35–41:59 — Breakthrough reviews, Broadway ascent, and conception of the Century Cycle
• 44:34–47:30 — Play signatures, monologue examples (incl. Viola Davis in King Hedley II), and character analysis
• 50:25–55:26 — “Fences” stage/film history, creative clashes, Black directors
• 65:58–78:05 — “Ground On Which I Stand” speech, Brustein debate, impact/lack thereof
• 79:48–85:14 — Final years, unfinished goals, legacy, and summing up Wilson’s cultural contribution

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Conclusion: The Enduring Relevance of August Wilson

Through personal history, artistic innovation, and unflinching advocacy, August Wilson expanded the boundaries of American theater, carved out space for Black stories and artists, and left a profoundly human legacy. As Patti Hartigan observes, Wilson’s greatest achievement may be both the 10-play cycle capturing the 20th-century Black experience and the widening of the American stage for all those who came after.

Transcript

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[Interviewer]

August Wilson's family story begins on Speartops Mountain in North Carolina. And we meet the matriarchs, his great grandmother, Sarah Eller Cutler. And there are a lot of stories about Sarah Ella Cutler on that mountain. What is one that's true and telling about who she was and what are some of the non documented legends?

[Patti Hartigan]

Well, you know, with that period of history, it's very hard to document when the census takers showed up at the door. It depended on whose kids were there, who answered the door, who felt like they needed to give a different name, etc. So this, the story of Willard justice being killed up there is absolutely true. That's documented in many, many newspapers. The story behind it is. Works a little fuzzy. Where. Why was he near her house? Why was he up on the mountain? What were they chasing him for? We don't know. But that scene that I paint at the very beginning of the book actually happened.

[Interviewer]

Her daughter Zanya worked as a domestic and told people that a white man had raped her and that her children, August Wilson's mother included Daisy, were the result. Nazonia died when August Wilson was 5 and he only learned about her through his mom. But he does name a character in Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Zonia. Why would he name a character after a woman that he really had no memory of?

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, because he honored all the ancestors. He wrote from what he called the blood's memory. And especially the matriarchs were very, very important to him. He worshiped his mother, Daisy Wilson. And he didn't know Zanya, but she represented the link to the past. So did there's a Cutler in Ma Rainey's black bottle. And he knew that that was a family name. How much of the actual history he knew, I don't think we, we know that. I don't. He never went to Spear, North Carolina. It was a question of people made the great migration and they didn't want to go back. They were looking for a better life. But he, he felt it in his blood. It was kind of uncanny. Some of the similarities of the things that I found in his ancestral history and things that appear in the place.

[Interviewer 2]

What's another example?

[Patti Hartigan]

Well, his great, great grandfather, Calvin Twitty, I found a will of a plantation owner that had a. It was a Twitty plantation. And there Was a Calvin listed in the list of enslaved people. In that same will, the owner left a piano to his daughter. And there's a play called the Piano Lesson. Also around in Bruce Pines, which is the largest town near Speer, there was a black man named John Goss who was accused of raping a white woman. It was based on her testimony, her testimony alone. He was working on a chain gang. And in Joe Turner's Come and Gone, as you know, Harold Loomis just got off seven years working on a chain gang.

[Interviewer 2]

August Wilson's mom, Daisy Wilson, arrives in Pittsburgh in 1937. And she's awed by everything she sees in this area known as the Hill. And the hill becomes an important character in the story and the life story of August Wilson. Can you describe the hill and its origins?

[Patti Hartigan]

Well, the Hill, when August Wilson was growing up, there was. Was a very mixed race area. Was where he called the, you know, the. The unwelcome. All settled on the Hill. And it was the kind of place in the 50s where everybody was an anti. All of. All the women could yell at any kid if they caught them doing something wrong. And it had a real community feel. There was a watchmaker who lived next door to the Wilsons. There were seven sisters who all stayed in the neighborhood. The Clancy Sisters. It was a real community. It had paint stores and barbershops and theaters and it was lively. When he was growing up, Daisy had.

[Interviewer]

Several children, including Frederick August Kittle Jr.

[Interviewer 2]

Born April 27, 1945.

[Interviewer]

His father was a European pastry chef is how he's been described some time. It's with whom Daisy would have several children. How much did August Wilson then Frederick.

[Interviewer 2]

August know about his father?

[Patti Hartigan]

He was an absent presence in the home. He was not particularly well regarded. August Wilson looked to a boxer who lived across the street named Charlie Burleigh as sort of a surrogate father. When Frederick Kittle did show up, he was frequently intoxicated, angry, throwing things. The. The children knew that some of them would hide and one would run across the street and get Charlie Burley. He said in an interview in the New Yorker that he only had one memory of his father. He took him downtown to buy some Gene Autry boots. And the anecdote is that his. His father told him always to have coins in his pocket and jingle them. And that was his way of telling August Wilson, you need to look like you. You know, you can pay here. You need. You need to be established.

[Interviewer 2]

I thought it was interesting though that Daisy gave him Frederick August Kittle Jr. Knowing that he wouldn't necessarily have access to his father.

[Patti Hartigan]

Yeah, she wants. She desperately wanted a boy. I. Maybe in those times, everybody named their firstborn son after the biological father. Well, we'll get to it later. But there is a story that, I mean, she never. She didn't marry him until he was very sick and dying, and she did that because he had another wife. When his. When Kittle's wife died, Daisy said, well, let's get married. And they went to a different courthouse. They didn't go in Pittsburgh. They went to a different county so no one could know. And she was, according to Richard Kittle, August Wilson's younger brother, she was doing it so they would get benefits when.

[Interviewer 2]

He passed his mother. Sounds like a wise woman.

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

[Interviewer 2]

My guest is Patty Hartigan. The name of her book is August Wilson A Life. It is our choice for a full bio. So Frederick August could read by 4. He was a smart kid, high IQ. He had a stutter. How did having a stutter shape his young life?

[Patti Hartigan]

I think it made him perhaps a little shy and a little defensive. I happened to find someone who went to kindergarten through third or fourth grade with him, and he's the one who told me that he stuttered. There are characters in Wilson Place who have speech impediments, but no one ever knew that it was him in his childhood. So I think it made him quiet. If he was called on, he always knew the answer, but he didn't raise his hand. If someone challenged him, he could very quickly get angry. And I think that comes from being a little, you know, when you have something like that, it might be a little insecure.

[Interviewer]

He experienced some racist bullying in school, especially at Catholic school, and it clearly stayed with him in as an adult. What was a story that he would recount of that time over and over again?

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, when he went to Central Catholic High School. You have to understand, this is an elite exam school. And your parish sends you and your parish pays for you. So he shows up and he. He is voracious reader. He's read everything he wants to learn. And there were notes left on his desk every morning using offensive boards at recession. And I went to the school and I walked the same path at recess. They didn't get to play ball, and they didn't get to do anything. They got in a line and they walked in a circle. And as he walked in the circle, someone would step on his shoe or kick him or throw a potato chip bag at him and then, you know, pretend that they hadn't done it. And he knew clearly what was going on. He was not welcome there, even the adults.

[Interviewer]

He was accused of plagiarism. At one point it was a black.

[Interviewer 2]

Teacher who accused him, though.

[Patti Hartigan]

Yeah, this is a different school. He left Central Catholic because he could. He just couldn't take it anymore. And then he went to a technical high school where he couldn't get into automotive. And they had him making tin cups and he felt the academics were beneath him. So he went, he went to the final high school, the public high school. And he liked this teacher. He called him Mr. B. And they were assigned to write a paper. So August Wilson went and he wrote a 20 page paper on Napoleon. He had footnotes. He typed it himself. And when he brought it in, the teacher said, put it down and said, you are either getting an A or an E. Now, an E at the time was a failing grade. And August Wilson said, what do you mean I'm going to get an A? When he said, well, who wrote this? You have older sisters. And he said, I. I wrote it. And the teacher, he wouldn't defend himself any further. So the teacher wrote E on it, and August Wilson threw it in the trash basket. Left school hoping for three days that someone would come and find him and apologize to him and make things right. And he. He went and he played basketball on the. On the court outside the school every morning for three days. And no one ever came. So he dropped out.

[Interviewer 2]

He said, I dropped out of school, but I did not drop out of life.

[Patti Hartigan]

Right. He went to the Carnegie Library. He hid this from his mother. He didn't tell her he had dropped out of a third school. And he went to the Carnegie Library every day. And he read and read and read and read. He was a complete autodidact. He. He devoured books that he. He saw a shelf which at the time said negro books, I think, and he just read every single one of them. And he was so inspired. And at that young age, he reading James Baldwin, he said, you know what? I can do this.

[Interviewer 2]

Daisy was not pleased when she found out that he had dropped out of school. She was really hard on him. You write in the book she's described as denying him food, banishing him to the basement. And it seems like it took him years to try to make this up to her or to, to get her approval.

[Patti Hartigan]

Yeah, it did. She, he, he. He said it once in an interview. He had an IQ of 143. He was her great hope. She wanted him to be a lawyer. He wanted to be a poet. Poets don't make money. You can't. You can't feed your children with. With words. You need bread. And so she was so sorely disappointed in him. And yes, he did always want to make it up to her. And when he. When he finally had a Ma Rainey's black bottom, you know, and he said, mom, you know, I've got a play. It's going to be it. And it. I'm. I'm doing well with this. She said. She said, you'll be a writer when you're on tv. And it wasn't until the Piano Lesson, the film teleplay for Hallmark hall of Fame was aired that he was finally on tv. And she had passed by that point. But he did look up and say, look, Ma, I did it.

[Interviewer 2]

In your chapter, A Period of Reinvention, we begin to see the beginnings of August Wilson as opposed to Frederick August Kittle Jr. When did the name change?

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, he changed his name. He told the story over and over and over again. He changed his name on April 1, 1965. That was the day that his father passed. He doesn't include that when he tells the story. He had just received $20 from his sister for writing a paper for her. She was a student at Fordham College at Fordham University. And he took the $20 and he went down to McFarren's typewriter store and he bought a used Royal Standard typewriter. He carried it back up the hill because he didn't have any money left. And he put in a piece of. You remember that onion skin he put in the paper. And he typed all different versions of his name. And he settled on August Wilson, which was a tribute to his mother. But he repeated that story, but he never told anyone. That was the day that his father passed. I found that at the courthouse and in historical records and newspapers. So there's something even more poetic about him just changing his name on that day because he had the new typewriter writer. He was rechristening himself.

[Interviewer]

He also was trying on new Personas, some affected, some accents, occasionally code. Switching between highbrow literary language and street vernacular. Wearing tweety jackets and caps as a young man. What was he looking for?

[Patti Hartigan]

I think he wanted to be the next great poet, really. That's what he was looking for. He read voraciously. He read all the poets, he claimed. He didn't read dramatic literature when he decided to become a playwright, but he knew his poetry. He was a great fan of Dylan Thomas, and he had always had a legal Pad and a pen or pencil with him. And he was always writing on or if he didn't have that, he was writing on a napkin. And he felt in his blood that he was a poet. You see it when he became a playwright, the monologues in his plays just soar like poetry. So he had that training before he started writing plays.

[Interviewer]

How did he make ends meet? People of his age at that time don't often make a living writing poetry, right?

[Patti Hartigan]

Well, he didn't people older than he does to make a living writing poetry, but he had every odd job you could have. In his one man autobiographical show, How I Learned what I Learned. He, he intersperses different jobs he had. Cutting lawns, washing dishes, short order cook. He did those jobs to pay the rent. And then when he walked out, he took his apron off and he put his tweet code on and he was a poet.

[Interviewer]

My guest is Patti Hartigan. We're talking about her book August A Life. It's our choice for full bio. He always, always, always identified as a black man. August Wilson did, even though he could.

[Interviewer 2]

Pass as he had a bro, did pass for white.

[Interviewer]

And over the course of his career, interviewers and reviewers would bring up his.

[Interviewer 2]

White lineage almost as a challenge to his blackness.

[Interviewer]

And he would get really, really ticked off.

[Patti Hartigan]

Yeah, it wasn't a brother, it was his uncle Ray.

[Interviewer]

Thank you.

[Patti Hartigan]

Yeah, yeah, he got, he got angry and he chose to, he self identified. Every human on the planet can choose to identify however they want, but people wouldn't leave him alone about this. And he said, repeatedly talked about Daisy's Kitchen and that the culture he learned there, the ethics, the values, everything he learned there, the songs, the food, was black culture. And that's how he chose to identify. And there are examples in the book of some really rude people asking him this question and not stopping even, even when he clearly, you know, said, this is who I am. Let's move on to the next question.

[Interviewer 2]

When did he begin writing poetry?

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, he, he wrote poetry in Central Catholic and he wrote poetry. He actually wrote poetry in, in middle school because he told a story about leaving poems for a girl he had a crush on in the parochial school he went to. So he was always writing, but he, when he, when he left school, he started writing more seriously. And then when he met his fellow poets on the Poets on the Hill, he really fashioned himself as a poet. Yeah, he was a poet who worked a day job, but he was still a poet and he gave readings. And there's a wonderful video of August Wilson and some of his colleagues going to Oberlin College, where they did a reading and they did some activism. And he looks very young, and it's. He. He read all the time.

[Interviewer 2]

You include one of the poems that he had published about Muhammad Ali. It says, muhammad Ali is a lion. He is a lion that breaks the back of the wind, who climbs to the end of the rainbow with three steps and devours the gold. Muhammad Ali with a stomach of gold, whose head is a lion.

[Patti Hartigan]

Yeah. You know, I don't know whether they ever met. Wouldn't that be fascinating if. Fascinating if they did? He did meet Hank Aaron. He met a lot of his heroes.

[Interviewer 2]

Oh, I'm sure.

[Patti Hartigan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer 2]

You know, you write about how August Wilson. Things changed for him one day in 1973 when he sat down and wrote what he called his morning statement. It said, it is the middle of winter, November 21st, to be exact. I got up, buckled my shoes, I caught a bus, and went riding into town. I just thought I'd tell you. What was the purpose of this Morning Statement.

[Patti Hartigan]

You know, he had been writing this highfalutin poetry. He'd been wearing tweed and adopting a Dylan Thomas accent. And I think this was his way of saying, this is direct. This is a morning statement. There's not. There's no questions in it. You can't. You know, it. It's taken on face value. This is what it is, and this is who I am. And for him, that was so freeing.

[Interviewer]

August Wilson cited as his influences the four Bs, Bearden, the blues, Baraka and Borges. So where do we see an example of. Let's start with artist Romare Bearden.

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, the Piano Lesson. The name of the play is taken from a Bearden collagen. Bearden lived in Pittsburgh for a while, and some of his collages and paintings depicted the people that August Wilson grew up with. He would look at them and I wish I had a copy of the Piano Lesson in front of me or even Joe Turner's Come and Gone. There was a man sitting in a boarding house, and he had an abject look on his face. He just. He was broken. He was distraught. And August Wilson said, what is going on with this man? This man who could be my uncle, who could be the guy who lived next door to me? And then he wrote his master piece, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, based on what he saw in that image. So Bearden was a remarkable influence. He wrote the introduction for a sweeping biography of Bearden, and he talked about how his whole world Changed when he saw these images.

[Interviewer]

As a young man, he became acquainted with the blues, specifically Bessie Smith's Nobody in town can make a sweet jelly roll like mine. Let's listen.

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, see? And they were praise. His praise could be. And as the people would pass by, you would hear me manly cry Nobody in dancing baker Sweet jelly roll eggman.

[Interviewer]

What was it about that song that he would come back to and say, yes, this was foundational to my writing?

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, I guess I mean her voice and the way she spoke to him, the sultry, the sexy, the. The. It. It was replete with the culture that he loved in Dai Kitchen. He said he played it over and over again 29 times or something like that. And actually I did interview the woman he was briefly living with at that time and she said, oh yes, he did. He never. And he never played the other side. It was a music that spoke to him. And he talked about it later on in his life too, when he was writing King Hedley II, which is set in the 1980s, which was a. A decade he didn't really relate to. He said he was going to listen to hip hop. He said he was going to listen to rap and he couldn't do it. He listened to the blues while he was writing the play. And he said because the current generation, the generation of artists in the 80s, had learned everything at the foot of the blues.

[Interviewer]

The last two Bs are rioters, poet Amiri Baraka and Jorge Luis Borges. What was it about Baraka that inspired him?

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, well, he was big in the national black arts movement and he believed that art and culture could perhaps bring about social progress. And August Wilson and his friends had a theater called Black Horizons which was modeled after it, I think it was. In 1968, the Drama Review put out an issue of On Black Theater. I have it. He said he got it and they all read it and they passed it around and it was so dog eared by, by the, you know, but they still kept it and they did every one of those plays. Baraka's play A Black Mask was in that collection in that scholarly review. And they did that play with Black Horizons.

[Interviewer]

And finally George or Jorge Luis Borges.

[Interviewer 2]

He was an erudite Argentinian writer, I know.

[Patti Hartigan]

And you know, he didn't. He always mentioned that he didn't really talk about it much except for once his play Seven Guitars begins at the end. He didn't start it that way, but he changed it at some point. And it begins right after a funeral. And then it goes back in time. And it takes you through the story of how the person died. And August Wilson said that he had read a story by Borges in the New Yorker that used that technique of telling you what happens in the very first sentence. And then the mystery is, well, how did. How did it get that way? And that intrigued him.

[Interviewer 2]

And before we wrap up today, I did want to ask about the Black Horizons Theater. You mentioned that. Tell us a little bit about the origin of it and why August Wilson and his friends started it.

[Patti Hartigan]

That's a really good question. Well, Rob Penny, who was part of the center Avenue Poets, was writing plays, and they did believe that the arts could build community and could. Could sort of build confidence and. And self confidence. And they started this theater and none of them really knew what they were doing. They. Nobody wanted to direct. And so they pointed at August Wilson and he said, I don't know how to direct. So he went and got a book out of the library. But they did these plays, and it was tr. Theater in the spirit. I mean, it probably cost 50 cents. Everybody, it was okay to bring your whole family, and kids could run around in the aisles, and they. They were eager to do these plays written by black people in the. In the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was a formative experience for him, although he really didn't know how to direct. Apparently when he was directing his first play, he came in and he said, everybody sat down. He said, okay, let's read the play. And they read the play, a table read. And the actors looked at him and said, well, what do we do now? And he said, I don't know. Let's read it again.

[Interviewer]

His first play was titled Recycle, correct?

[Patti Hartigan]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

And it was only performed once?

[Patti Hartigan]

Yes. It was performed in a. In a park. Maisha Bataan, the poet, and August Wilson played in it. And it was a character, a man and a woman.

[Interviewer]

And why did it only play once?

[Patti Hartigan]

The audience didn't really take to it very well. They were doing. That summer, they were doing work with kids in the park. And the kids, when they said, well, what do you want to do? They said, let's do Superfly. So he did his play, and people just. They didn't want it. It was, as you said earlier in the last segment, it was a mix of this high poetic language with vernacular, and it went back and forth, and the audience just didn't relate to it. And at one point, Wilson ended up smacking the actress and she swore at him, and then the whole audience swore at them. And that Was it? That was over. So it was never done again.

[Interviewer]

His next big production, Black Bart, or Big in quotes, was in 1980, Black Bart and the Sacred Hills. It was a musical. It was a little bit out there. It was also a big failure. What was it about? And what did he learn from the failure?

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, it was about a Black Bart, the old bandit who's in the hills, and he's going to turn water into gold. And it was a rambling, sprawling western with a multicultural cast of not very finely tuned characters. And he said that he was modeling it after Lysistrata. So there were some bawdy songs, and the women were dressed like they were in a Bob Fosse show. And it was a failure because it was just so out there and wild. But on the first night at Penumbra Theater in St. Paul, all the. All the. The patrons of the theater came, all the people who were making grants, and this is the beginning of the second wave of feminism, and most of the people who ran the foundations were feminist women. And they all walked out on the first night. Then in a subsequent production, I think a motorcycle went on fire on stage. And so it was a colossal failure. And Lou Bellamy, who was the artistic director of Penumbra Theater, said, I will never do a play by that August Wilson ever again. And, of course, he went on to do all the plays. So, you know, I interviewed August Wilson in early 2005, before he was diagnosed with liver cancer, and he was about to turn 16, about to produce the 10th play, Radio Golf, and I mentioned Black Barton. He started laughing, just joyous laughter, saying, oh, that was fun. Maybe I should revisit that.

[Interviewer]

Early in August Wilson's career, he didn't.

[Interviewer 2]

Have these great successes. He divorced.

[Interviewer]

He's not really seeing his kid as.

[Interviewer 2]

Much as he'd like to. He'd moved from Pittsburgh to Minneapolis.

[Interviewer]

From all of your research, and having interviewed him, what was behind his perseverance.

[Interviewer 2]

To be a playwright?

[Patti Hartigan]

It was just dogged. I think it. You know, he said he wrote from the blood's memory, but I think poetry and drama flowed through his blood. He was determined. I. I think maybe, you know, partly when you grow up and you're told by the nuns and your mother how smart you are, and you're going to be such a roaring success, he just wanted to do this. He fell in love with it. He's. And it's that grit, you know, that stick to itiveness, that no matter what. He applied to the Eugene o' Neill Theater center five times, even sent the same play twice because he didn't think they had read it. And he just kept going. He kept going. And finally he did have the breakthrough with Ma Rainey.

[Interviewer 2]

That's where we're going next. We're discussing August Wilson A Life. It is a new biography of the playwright. My guest is Patty Hartigan. So this pivotal Moment comes in 1982 when he attends the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene o' Neill Center. Just for context, what is the role of the Eugene o' Neill center in modern theater? Why would this conference, what would it offer any young playwright?

[Patti Hartigan]

Yeah, well, at the time that he was there, the Eugene o' Neill Theatre center was known as the launch pad of the American theater. It was an incubator, a place where playwrights could go. And some summers, usually they took about 12 playwrights out of, you know, however thousand, many thousands applied and the in it was. First there was a pre conference where they read the play out loud. And then there was a four week, no, a two week national playwright. Two or four weeks. And everything focused on the playwright. Everything there was. When Lloyd Richards was the artistic director, there was a regular company of actors. They arrived and they didn't even know what roles they were playing. They were told what roles to play. The directors got the work on stage, but their job was not to hide the flaws. Their job was to let the work be seen as it was and let the playwright figure it out for his or herself. An extraordinary opportunity. I think this was way before places like Sundance were doing the same thing for film. So it truly was just a gift to the playwright. And they had amazing dramaturgs, amazing directors. Everybody lived in community and it was theater boot camp for the playwright.

[Interviewer]

And as you mentioned, August Wilson applied many times before he was accepted. Which brings us to Lloyd Richards. This is where he forms one of the most important relationships of his life with Lloyd Richards, then the artistic director of the O', Neill, dean of the Yale School of Drama since 1979 and an African American man at this moment in time. What was Lloyd Richards reputation in the theater community?

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, Lloyd's reputation. He was a Buddha. Everybody looked up to Lloyd. Lloyd was. He wasn't a loud man. He walked quietly. But when he said something, it was. He had such gravitas. He had directed Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the sun on Broadway, the first black man to direct on Broadway in 1959. He had championed the work of Athol Fugard, the South African playwright who wrote about apartheid. And he, as you said, he had These three positions. He was also artistic director of the. Of the Yale Repertory Theater. And he truly was dedicated to the playwright and dedicated to the theater. And he was the pinnacle, I guess you say, look at those positions that he had. And he was a bit of a mystery. That's why people called him Buddha. He would say, you know, you'd ask him, you know, you're on the mountaintop and you ask Lloyd what it all means, and he'll say, he would say, be where you are.

[Interviewer 2]

Oh, I like the style already.

[Patti Hartigan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know.

[Interviewer 2]

He would go on to guide the careers of several well known playwrights. Wendy Wasserstein, Christopher Durang. At this moment, he was championing August Wilson's manuscript, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, during the selection process of hundreds of applicants, even though, as you write, it was bloated at 4 hours, heavy with lengthy poetic monologues, but not so precise on the structure of plot. Yeah, what did Lloyd Richards see in that play and see in August Wilson?

[Patti Hartigan]

Do you know? He said when he read it, he used to work in a barber shop in Detroit when he was a kid, and he said he could hear the voices of the guys who came in on a Saturday to get their hair cut and just sit around and tell lies. He could hear his people in those voices. And once the. The characters in that play are so richly drawn. That appealed to Lloyd Richards. Now, it needed some surgery, but that's what he was good at. He excelled at that.

[Interviewer 2]

This is this long collaboration until problems arose, which we'll talk about in a moment. The New York Times describes this pairing as one of the most successful artistic partnerships in American theater. What worked between this playwright and this director, Wilson and Richards?

[Patti Hartigan]

Well, I think since A Raisin in the Sun, Lloyd Richards was hoping that another playwright would come along. And here walks in this man in the tweed coat and the hat at the Eugene o' Neill Theatre center. And for August Wilson, we've talked about his background in writing poetry, but not ever studying dramatic structure. For instance, when he got to the o', Neill, and this was with Fences, actually, he didn't realize that he couldn't have a scene end with a guy in the rain, soaking wet, with wet hair and wet clothes, and then at the top of the next scene, five seconds later, be in dry clothes and have dry hair, that was something he didn't think about. He just wrote these poetic monologues. So to have Lloyd Richards, who knew dramatic structure, he was dean of the Yale School of Drama, pair up with this raw talent that was Oozing out of August Wilson was. It was a good part. It was a great partnership. It was great for both men. It was symbiotic.

[Interviewer]

How did they arrive at this idea that they would try out Wilson's work regionally with an eye to Broadway?

[Patti Hartigan]

That was an idea that Lloyd Richards came up with. The regional theater was started a couple of decades earlier, but he knew these theaters, and it was his idea. And it was particularly suited for a writer like Wilson because he didn't like to cut his place until he saw them. He didn't. And directors would make him sit in the audience so that he could hear and he could know, oh, there's a bad note here, and I got to take that out, and this isn't working. So this particular method for him was great. And I know it was controversial at the time because the regional theater is nonprofit, and it's to bring theater to communities, but the theaters were getting a new work by August Wilson, and sometimes. Sometimes plays weren't ready. They weren't even ready to be on stage at the regional theater. And that's where he. That's how he learned. It was a rare thing that happened, and Lloyd Richards invented it.

[Interviewer]

We're talking to Patty Hartigan. The name of the book is August Wilson A Life. It's our choice for full bio at.

[Interviewer 2]

The Eugene o' Neill Center.

[Interviewer]

There were sort of rules about when.

[Interviewer 2]

Plays went up that they wouldn't necessarily.

[Interviewer]

Get reviewed, but reviewers could come see them. Is that the way it worked?

[Patti Hartigan]

Yeah, producers and reviewers could come. They usually would come on a Saturday night or Friday night. But no, I. I went there as a journalist and a critic, and I knew the rules. You were not allowed to, or you could do a feature, but you could not do a review. And Frank Rich was so blown away by what he saw that, you know, the headline looked like it was a feature, but it was really. There was review material in there about playwrights, but primarily about August Wilson and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.

[Interviewer 2]

How did that review change August Wilson's career trajectory?

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, astronomical. When a review like that runs, even if it's a feature and not a review, producers see that, and they can. They. They have interest, sight unseen, just. Just by seeing something like that. So he. He actually left the o' Neill, and he had an offer to turn it into a musical, which he did not want to do. One thing you didn't do was tell August Wilson what to do with his plays. And the offer was for $25,000, but the contract said they could fire the writer, he and his wife at the time, Judy Oliver, had recently gone, filed for bankruptcy. He turned the offer down. That's what I was saying earlier about his integrity. He really believed it. He wanted control of his work. But that led of course to Ma Rainey going to Broadway. After the o'. Neill. It was performed at the Yale Repertory Theater and that production reviewers were allowed to review. There it was at a professional theater. And then after that it went to Broadway.

[Interviewer]

August Wilson and Lloyd Richard did five plays together. They had this very fruitful relationship. Things started to fray a little bit because August Wilson began behaving like a director in some cases.

[Patti Hartigan]

Cases, yes.

[Interviewer]

But it seems like the real moment that their relationship had a. Had a crack that could not be fixed was when Wilson created a production company without Lloyd Richards or with terms that were sort of insulting to Lloyd Richards.

[Patti Hartigan]

Yes, well, there was that. That was the beginning, widening the crack that was already existing because August Wilson didn't feel he was getting compensated fairly for his plays. And it was also he, he was becoming. He knew what he was doing. He knew that he, he was a big name now. He was a bold faced name. People came to his place and he wanted more control. Now you can't have two directors in the room. So the production company was, was a very difficult moment that Benjamin Mordecai and August Wilson formed this company and they really didn't include Lloyd Richards in it. But then after that they were working on Seven guitars and August Wilson didn't like the way the production was going and he was insinuating himself in a director's role in many ways. And some letters he wrote, some memos how he acted. And then there was an actor, the great actor Zakes McKay was really having trouble in, in the role of Headley and August Wilson wanted to fire him. And Lloyd Richards was very loyal to him and he didn't want to. And that's that. There was a gigantic blow up and that's where that was put the nail in the coffin, shall we say, because.

[Interviewer]

We are New York Public Radio. I have to ask about the time that August Wilson spent in New York. New dramatists. You note that he arrived and fell in with the. I think you wrote the ethos of the place. What impact did new dramatists have on him?

[Patti Hartigan]

You know, new dramatist gave him so much confidence. He had arrived as a, as a playwright. They have these residencies for. It was about seven a year. I think they just closed down, if I'm correct, which is so sad. And he had A place to stay. He had a place to put his hat. He was a playwright. He had not been on Broadway yet, but this was the recognition that he wanted. He was also a member of the Playwright center in Minneapolis. And he said that when he walked into that room, everyone at the table described themselves as a playwright. And he finally felt, I'm a playwright now. And the New York, the New York. The New Dramatist was equally so.

[Interviewer]

When did August Wilson decide that his work was going to be part of a 10 play cycle documenting, in air quotes, documenting the African American experience?

[Patti Hartigan]

Yeah, you know, it's hard to pinpoint the exact date. Different people have different memories of when it happened. There is a story that he was at a Seder and he heard the first, the first line, we were slaves in Jerusalem. And it made him think, we need to remember. African Americans need to remember their history. Not to hide their history, not to try to move on from their history. And it was probably around the time he was working on Joe Turner's Come and Gone, which was the third play that he realized that he had written this play in the 50s. He had written this play about Ma Rainey at the turn of the century, and why not do one for every decade? And he came up with the idea. And then the idea, I mean, it's a phenomenal task. And he was finishing this task on his deathbed. No other American playwright has ever done anything this ambitious. There's also a story that one of the playwrights at the o' Neill said that they were walking on the beach, headed toward the Crab Shanty to get a sandwich. And Wilson said to him that summer that he had just come up with the idea. So you can't pinpoint it down exactly, but it was around the time of Joe Turner's Come and Gone.

[Interviewer 2]

What are signatures of an August Wilson play?

[Patti Hartigan]

Long monologues, Long, poetic monologues. He had something he called a spectacle character, which would be Gabriel and Fences, Hambone and Two Trains Running. They were these seemingly sad sack down on their luck, disabled, disturbed people who really had the wisdom of the community in, in everything they did. So there, there, there's that character. They're the monologues and the monologues. You know, you can, you can take a play like King Henley ii, which has some problems with it, I think, but there's a speech that Viola Davis gave about having. Bringing a baby into the world we exist in now. Why would anyone want to bring a baby in if it's going to get shot by a policeman, if it's going to shoot someone. If it's going to go to the baby, the child's going to go to jail. And that. I mean that like I'm tearing up now even as I describe that speech.

[Actor Reading Monologue]

I'm 35 years old. Don't seem like there's nothing left. I'm through with babies. I ain't raising no more. Ain't raising no grandkids. I'm looking out for Tanya. Ain't raising no kid to have somebody shoot him. They have his friends shoot them, that the police shoot him. Why you want to bring another life into this world that don't respect life? I don't want to raise no more babies when you got to fight to keep them alive. You take little buddy Rose mother up on Bryn Maw Road. What she got a heartache that don't never go away. She up there now sitting down in the living room. She gotta sit down. Cause she can't stand up. She's sitting down trying to figure it out. Trying to figure out what happened. One minute her house is full of life, the next minute's full of death. She was waiting for him to come home. And they bring her a corpse. I ain't going through that. I ain't having this baby. And I ain't got to explain it to nobody.

[Patti Hartigan]

So his. His monologue spoke directly to the audience. And they're funny. I mean, even when they're tragic. The play Jitney, the. The. The characters on that stage are like the guy next door, the guy that Lloyd Richards knew at the barbershop. They tell great stories that you don't laugh at them, you laugh with them. You can feel them. Those are the things. And then, you know, there's also the. The sort of mystical elements in particularly in Joe Turner's Coming on and in the Piano Lesson that there's a feeling that you are going back to the blood's memory. You are going back to slavery. You are remember the remembering those bones walking on the wall water. And Joe Turner. There is a ghost that has to be exorcised in the Piano Lesson. And the final thing is he had his favorite character. And my favorite character, everybody's favorite character is Aunt Esther. And it's deliberately. It's E S T E R and it's it's ancestor. And she's a woman in each of the plays whose her age supposedly is the same age as if she had been born in 1619, the day the first when the first slave ships came to Jamestown. And she represents historical memory. She is unseen in several of the plays. But she comes on stage in Gem of the Ocean and she is, she keeps the memory and of course she's. And he said she's just like any 90 year old woman you see walking down the street who remembers everything that ever happened. And she was the most important character for him.

[Interviewer]

It's interesting that you should mention that character and that Viola Davis monologue because there was criticism, there have been articles written and dissertations and papers that August Wilson did not write great female characters or he underwrote female characters and he was often dinged for not having substantial roles for women. 1. How aware was he of that criticism?

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, I'm sure he was aware of it. The women, the women like that character that I just mentioned, that speech in King Headley, they, they got more rounded, more. There was more to them. As he wrote later he rewrote Jitney. Jitney was originally a one act play and the female character of that play is just, she loves her man and she's going to do whatever he says in the rewrite. She has spine. And I think that was deliberate. His first daughter was older now and he was no longer looking to the 1950s as the paragon of what you write about and how women are perceived in their roles. And I agree with the criticism, especially in the early plays. They are not his strongest point. But even in a play like Fences, Rose is, you know, she's. Yeah, she was a 1950s housewife. Yet when she learns that her husband Troy has been cheating on her and has a baby by another woman who died in childbirth, she has that phenomenal speech where she says, this child has a mother, but you, a womanless man. Every single woman in the theater jumps to their feet and starts applauding. So they do have their moments. But I do understand the criticism.

[Interviewer 2]

We mentioned Viola Davis and King Headley. Of course, people know her in the film Fences, we'll talk about Fences. That's a whole other story which we'll get to. But there were actors who worked with August Wilson again and again and again. The Wilson Warriors. Who were some of the Wilson Warriors?

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, the late great Anthony Chisholm, who I interviewed a bunch of times for the book. And he passed. He was fabulous. Ruben Santiago Hudson. There's a whole stable of them. Viola Davis, Theresa Merritt was the original Mauraney, but that's the only one she did. The roles are so fantastic for African American actors and they always have sterling cast. James Earl Jones was not a member of the Wilson Warriors. He was in Fences and that was it.

[Interviewer]

Perhaps August Wilson's most lauded play. It won the Pulitzer. It won the Tony Fences. There could be a whole dramatic play around Fences and the making of Fences and all the different characters that intersected with Fences. Let's start with James Earl Jones in the lead. He had a lot to say about the script, and from the reading of your book, it seemed that he and August Wilson disagreed quite a bit.

[Patti Hartigan]

They did. James Earl Jones was pretty direct, and he said he didn't like August Wilson, and he said that August Wilson didn't like him either. I, James Earl Jones did want to make some changes to the play. He had a lot of opinions and he wasn't shy about sharing them.

[Interviewer]

Was this unusual behavior on James Earl Jones part for an actor of his stature at that time?

[Patti Hartigan]

You know, I don't know. I think in any production, everybody has a lot of opinions, but August Wilson was adamant and this was a real turning point for him, that he had final control over his work. And James Earl Jones and the producer had different ideas. And August Wilson was a very stubborn man. And when he didn't want to do something, he wasn't going to do it. He was going to stick to his guns. So it was a very volatile pre Broadway run, shall we say, in San.

[Interviewer]

Francisco, and it wasn't a secret.

[Interviewer 2]

That's something I found interesting.

[Interviewer]

It seemed like everyone knew that the playwright and the actor did not get along.

[Patti Hartigan]

Well, the people within the production knew, but people from the theater who I've known for several decades had sort of heard rumblings about this story, but never knew what parts of it were true and what weren't. So within the production. Sure, they knew. And you know, when there were moments where there was a lot of anger and some yelling and they fired Lloyd Richards briefly, who fired Lloyd Richards. And they fought about the ending and they fought about. And so within the production. Yeah, you couldn't not know. But in the outside world, it won the Tony Award, it won the Pulitzer Prize. Everybody applauded and. And he got standing ovations. And it was his most financially successful play.

[Interviewer 2]

And it was a play that it took decades past Wilson's death to get to screen. And it's a really interesting reason why. So. And please correct me if I get any of these facts wrong. Eddie Murphy got the right to Fences.

[Patti Hartigan]

He optioned the rights. Yes.

[Interviewer 2]

And August Wilson was really demanding that there be a black director.

[Patti Hartigan]

Yes.

[Interviewer 2]

And that seemed to be the hurdle to getting Fences made. One of the hurdles. Why? Yeah, explain what. What happened?

[Patti Hartigan]

Well, he he said that at his first meeting at Eddie Murphy's mansion. Remember Eddie Murphy this. He was at the top of his game at this time.

[Interviewer]

This is 1987.

[Patti Hartigan]

Yeah. And in high, high demand. He optioned it in. August Wilson just said, you know, I want a black director. And then they had a back and forth where I think, according to Wilson, in a piece he later wrote, Eddie Murphy said, I don't want to hire someone just because they're black. And August Wilson said, neither do I. I want to hire, you know, somebody who's good, who's going to do the film. And he. He said that, and he. He couldn't get it. He didn't like some of the people they were offering him. They were offering him white directors. And he just said, no, if it gets made, it gets made. If it doesn't, it doesn't. He felt very strongly about this one in particular, because more people were going to see the film version of Fences that had seen all of his plays, probably, and so he felt very strongly about him.

[Interviewer]

Well, that was a question I had, is that this is a play that could. So many people book could see, yet he was so adamant about having a black director. Why was that more important to him and to his legacy than getting this story to a large amount of people? Did you get a sense of why?

[Patti Hartigan]

Well, I mean, he wrote about it. He wrote a piece in Spin magazine, and then it was excerpted on the New York Times Op Ed page, and it was an opera about it. But he felt for this particular movie, he felt that in order to direct it, you had to be a member of the culture that it depicted. And he felt very strongly about that. And that's why he kept saying no. When he didn't want to do something, he didn't do something. And when he made up his mind about something, he stuck to his guns. So it was really important to him. And then you wait and what is it? 2016 from 1987. And you need someone with the wattage of Denzel Washington to finally be able to direct the film and get it off the ground.

[Interviewer 2]

What were other instances when August Wilson did allow his work to be televised or to be reconsidered for screen?

[Patti Hartigan]

The. The. Only. The only other one was the. The. The teleplay of the Piano Lesson, which was a Hallmark hall of Film Television film.

[Interviewer 2]

How involved was he in the making of that?

[Patti Hartigan]

Very. He was. He was. I think he has a credit as a producer on that. It was filmed in Pittsburgh in 1994.

[Interviewer 2]

Did he consider that a Professional success.

[Patti Hartigan]

You know, he never really talked much about it. I mean, I'm sure when it, when it, when it aired, there were millions of people watching it again, more than had seen his plays. He did feel great because he was finally on television and he could speak up to his mother in the heavens and say, I did it, Matt. You can find it. There's a really grainy version of it on YouTube. I don't know. It's probably. And, you know, it's very much by the book. He. He didn't really talk about that, actually, to tell you the truth. I think as he got closer to the end of the cycle, the goal was to get those plays on paper because he said he was writing 10 and he was going to write 10. And that hung over his head a lot. There were so many other things he wanted to do. He. He was. He had the beginnings of a novel. Wouldn't you love to read an Office Wilson novel? He talked a lot and laughed a lot about. About a play he called the Coffin Maker Play, which had a crazy cast of characters kind of like Black Bart, including Queen Victoria and the guys the coffin makers were fighting with the undertakers, and they were all on strike. And that was. That was the premise for the play. That's all I know. I never. I haven't read any more of it. I've seen some notes, but I think. I think rather than focus on the film medium, he really wanted to finish the cycle and. And, you know, can be. Get an impediment. It can get in the way if you're thinking about Hollywood. He also felt, and he said many, many times, he was offered screenwriting opportunities by major directors and he turned them all down because he knew too much about playwrights who had gone to Hollywood and then they never wrote another play.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Wasn't he offered to write about Amistad?

[Patti Hartigan]

Yeah. Yeah. According to his attorney. Yes.

[Interviewer]

Let me ask you about his attorney. That's quite a nice segue, John. Is it Breglio?

[Patti Hartigan]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

Who was and still is a powerful entertainment lawyer and producer. Why did someone like August Wilson need a John Braglio in his life?

[Patti Hartigan]

Well, after his. After the non review ran in the New York Times, after the Eugene o' Neill Theater center production of Ma Rainey, he started getting all these offers and he had two different agents. One of them, he was furious when he got that offer from. To turn Ma Rainey into a musical. And he wasn't having any. Much luck with. With agents. And it was actually Benjamin Morai and Lloyd Richards who introduced him. To his attorney because he needed somebody, but he didn't want an agent anymore. And so John Reglio became really quite protective of August Wilson, Serving like an agent, but also serving, you know, for contracts and things like that, anything legal. And that's how he got it. Again, it was August Wilson saying, I don't like agents, and I'm not doing it the way everybody else does it.

[Interviewer]

We're discussing August Wilson a life. It's our choice for full bio. My guest is Patty Hartigan. At the height of his success in the 80s, it's. It's pretty. It's the late 80s. He's got that. That one run where he's got Fences on Broadway and Joe Turner's at regional theaters, and the Piano Lesson is going to debut at Yale. Who were his friends? Who was around him at this time? Who were his peers?

[Patti Hartigan]

Late 80s? Well, Claude Purdy in. He's. He was. He was a direct. The. The late Claude Purdy was a director who had worked all over Europe. He moved to St. Paul when Penumbra Theater was founded, and he convinced Dougus Wilson to move to join him there. You know, this new theater, it's All About Us, and those two were tight during that period. The. The play the Poets back home in Pittsburgh were. He was still very tight with them, but he was living somewhere else. He was hearing the voices of Pittsburgh, but he was living in St. Paul. He always had a group of male friends. Later, when he moved to Seattle, the great novelist Charles Johnson was his dear friend. But, you know, how much time did he have? He didn't. He didn't actually go to parties, go on vacation. He was really just directed.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, it's interesting, you know, as we've been talking about his career, we've talked very little about his family or his personal life. And, you know, on his gravestone it says playwright and poet above father and husband and family member. There's this 60 Minutes interview he did with Ed Bradley, and they seem very comfortable. And at the end, he says, yeah, the work comes first, family comes second.

[Patti Hartigan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Did you find that to be the case in your research?

[Patti Hartigan]

I did find that to be the case. I mean, he, He, He. He truly cared about and truly wanted to be more involved with, particularly his children. But again, the work came first, and it's sort of. It's a price someone like that pays. In my prologue, I kind of tried to create sort of a cinematic scene of him at the height of his career, but near the end and looking back in his hometown of Pittsburgh, that he had done all these things he said he was going to do, but what did it cost him? And I think family might have been a little bit about that. But, you know, he. I also have heard stories from people interviewed of him answering the door in a birthday hat, you know, those pointy hats, because it was his daughter Azula's third birthday and I think maybe his wife at the time had left to go get the cake or something. And he was stuck with 153 year olds. And he's like, come on in. We're having, you know, we're having a party here. So, yeah, it's a rough thing. I mean, it's a rough thing for. For any artist who has. Who makes that kind of choice, especially because he said he set the bar so high for himself. But, yeah, he would admit absolutely that the work came first.

[Interviewer 2]

And just so we're clear, would you run through his marriages and his children? I feel like we should say their names out loud.

[Patti Hartigan]

Yeah, sure. His first wife was Brenda Burton, who was in. They were very young. They were in Pittsburgh and they had Sakina. Ansara Wilson was their daughter, who was born around 1970. Was it 70? Um. And, um, that ended because August they had gone. They had actually been evicted from their public housing and she filed for divorce. He was working all those odd jobs and working at the theater until late at night, and the poetry wasn't paying the rent. She went on to nursing school after that. And then he. When he moved to St. Paul, he met Judy Oliver, who was a white social worker, who they were married for many years, and she was his muse. She wrote the grants, she sent the grants off, and they split up in 1990. And then his third wife is Constanzo Romero, who he married in. They married in 1994, but they were living in Seattle together before that. And they have one daughter, Azula Carmen.

[Interviewer]

And do his children carry on his legacy?

[Patti Hartigan]

His.

[Interviewer]

The mantle of August Wilson, my dad the playwright, or is he just dad?

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, that's an interesting question. I think for Sakina. She's older. I think it's a little of both. I mean, he's dad first. He's definitely dad first, but they honor the work. Yeah, sure. And the legacy is so important.

[Interviewer]

August Wilson gave a famous speech they delivered at a Theater Communications Group conference in Princeton, New Jersey in 1990. 86. It's called the Ground On Which I Stand Speech. And Patty, he kind of said the quiet part out loud, that black playwrights and theaters are underfunded and underappreciated and under considered. And that colorblind casting was an insult because the black experience mattered. How did he. We'll talk a little bit more about the speech and the response to the speech. But how did he end up giving this speech in the first place?

[Patti Hartigan]

Well, Theater Communications has this annual conference which is, you know, a gathering of a who's who of regional theater and some commercial theater, too. And that year, things were bubbling. There was talk in the theater community about lack of equity and who's on stage and who's. You know, and something needed to be done. So the director of TCG at the time hired Ken Brecher and his wife, who to plan this conference. And out of the blue, they thought, you know, who's got a lot to say? August Wilson. And they asked him to do the speech, and he said no. And he was in Pittsburgh at the time working on jitney. And he thought about. He said, you know what? I am going to do the speech. And it was it. They knew that they were going to get something fiery. They didn't quite know how fiery it would be.

[Interviewer]

Here's one of the things he said. There are and have always been two distinct and parallel traditions in black art. That is, art that is conceived and designed to entertain white society. An art that feeds the spirit and celebrates the life of black America by designing its strategies for survival and prosperity. What happened after he gave this speech?

[Patti Hartigan]

You mean Immediately.

[Interviewer]

Let's talk immediate. Let's talk immediately. In the afternoon.

[Patti Hartigan]

Immediately. Immediately. It created a buzz. I mean, there had. There was applause. You can find. Well, now that's. There was applause, but there was also shock. And people walked out. Think. Some people, some of the, you know, the head honchos of these regional theaters saying, you know, we've been trying to do something to make things more equitable, and we've been doing everything wrong. That was kind of the. The response. There was also anger. There was also. There were also actors who, you know, had fought long and hard for non traditional casting or colorblind casting, and they disagreed with him. At the conference itself, the whole thing came to a halt. And they, you know, had meetings outside impromptu. No one cared anymore about the. The. The panels on how to make a better box office. They all wanted to talk about the speech, which was great, right? More talk about these issues is fabulous.

[Interviewer]

One of the points that he was trying to make, which I thought was. Was very interesting, was the idea that black culture is culture. And that seems very like, duh, right in 2023. But at this time, what were some of the things that he was writing about that might really be foreign to predominantly white audiences?

[Patti Hartigan]

Huh? That's such an interesting question. In retrospect, there was one time at the Huntington Theater, I think they were doing the Piano Lesson, and I was talking to Lloyd Richards and he said that a couple had come, you know, on one of the previews, walked out of. Walking out of the theater, they recognized him and they went up to him and they said, Mr. Richards, thank you for inviting me into a black family's home. I've never been invited before.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Patti Hartigan]

So, yeah. And I mean, I can't tell it with the same gravitas that Lloyd Richards told it, but. But I think, you know, maybe, maybe there, maybe that was true for a lot of people. You certainly weren't seeing it on stage. So. Yeah. And it is funny that, you know, you read that now and you think he actually had to say that. But, I mean, it was in quotes. Controversial.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, it was controversial. That was what was so interesting about it. That.

[Patti Hartigan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

There is a very well known theater critic for the New Republic, Robert Brustein, who also has an incredible resume, which I'll get you to tell us a little bit about, who wrote disparagingly of August Wilson's work. And we're going to tread carefully because Mr. Brustein just passed away. But we do need to get into what the two men talked about. So just for context, could you explain who. Who Robert Brustein was and his role in theater?

[Patti Hartigan]

Robert Brustein was, in addition to being the drama critic at the New Republic, he was the dean of the Yale School of Drama and he founded Yale Repertory Theater. He was replaced by Lloyd Richards. Brustein's contract was not renewed by, I think it was a. Bartlett Giamatti was the president of Yale at the time. And he ran off with his actors and went to Cambridge and had a relationship, sort of collaboration with Harvard and founded the American Repertory Theater. The American Repertory Theater during Brustein's era was known for auteur directors doing their interpretations of classics. And it was heady and exciting. That was different. He, when he left Yale, he made some comments about how the Yale was. Was ruining the Yale School of Drama. It was going to be all about undergraduates and the graduate students. You know, would you. You wouldn't have another Meryl Streep, which was really kind of a stab at Lloyd Richards, who had just been hired to do the job. Lloyd Richards was never said a word publicly. He was very quiet. And then Robert Brustein wrote he did not review the first few August Wilson plays on Broadway, but he did review the Piano Lesson. And this was a review, I think it was in the days before we could email it back to each other. But everybody in the theater world had a copy of this review because it was scathing and he used incendiary language that was insulting and demeaning. And that sort of began then when Wilson gave his speech, Brustein fired back in the New Republic. And then it went back and forth and they had the answering each other with essays in American Theater magazine as well. And then the two of them met at Town hall in New York for what was billed as the fight of the century. It really wasn't, but I was there.

[Interviewer]

Oh, okay. Well, I can't wait to get to that. Two things about Brustein's criticism of the.

[Interviewer 2]

Piano Lesson and of August Wilson.

[Interviewer]

What were his main criticisms? First of all?

[Patti Hartigan]

Well, he didn't like the play, that the play was kitchen sink propaganda. And he also didn't like the way the plays were being produced at regional theaters before going to Broadway. I think he called it mick theater. That he was an early founder of regional theaters in the country and he felt that nonprofit should be non profit, even though his theater, American Repertory Theater, had sent a couple of plays to Broadway.

[Interviewer 2]

And when you say kitchen sink, what does that mean?

[Patti Hartigan]

Traditional, nothing experimental. Kitchen sink. I mean well made. I'm not going to use the language that he used in the review because I don't want to, but just very traditional, very conservative story takes place. One set family. That was his criticism. He didn't think he was covering any new ground.

[Interviewer 2]

And because the language he used, it would not be acceptable today. That review would not be published today.

[Patti Hartigan]

I hope not. No. I mean, you can say just the way he phrased things was just really kind of deliberately goading. And I will say that I. Robert Brustein did a lot of great work at the American Repertory Theater. I have to say that. Rest in peace, since he did pass and he was an experimental great mind of the theater. He just had. He had fights with people.

[Interviewer 2]

Yeah, you can read the New York Times obituary of him. It's very even handed. And it does say that while he was a great lion of theater, there were many people who had fights with him.

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh yeah, I'm in the index of one of his books. He didn't like me for a while.

[Interviewer 2]

August Wilson said of Brustein's suggestion that people might be producing plays by marginalized groups like filling quotas. Basically, Wilson said Brustein's surprisingly sophomoric assumption that this tremendous outpouring of work by minority artists leads to confusing standards and that funding agencies have started substituting sociological for aesthetic criteria. Leaving aside notions like quality and excellence shows him to be the victim of, of 19th century thinking in the linguistic environment that posits blacks as unqualified. Quite possibly this tremendous outpouring of works by minority artists may lead to a raising of standards and a raising of levels of excellence. But Mr. Brustein cannot allow that possibility.

[Interviewer]

Did these two men really not like each other or were these, was this about too public intellectual sparring?

[Patti Hartigan]

It was, it became about two public intellectuals sparring when they had their, their showdown, which wasn't really much of a showdown. At Town Hall, Anna de Vere, the great Anna Deavere Smith, was called into to moderate. But she really, it was billed seriously being built like a boxing match. People were taking bets. It was a star studded audience. It was a freezing cold night and neither one of them wanted to do it. But they couldn't say no. And according to Brustein, they did kind of make up and got to be friendly. I don't, I certainly didn't get a feeling that August Wilson was holding any major grudge against Brustein near the end. But I mean it was, it was. The questions from the audience were absurd.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Patti Hartigan]

And I, I think, I think at the end said something like, oh, the thing I've learned about you is that you're a teddy bear. He said, it's August Wilson. The minute he said he felt like an idiot because it's a stupid line. And Wilson came back and said, I, I, sure, I may be soft spoken, but I assure you I'm a lion. So it was really for show. And, and what Anna Deavere Smith had hoped to do was to have a conversation like a conversation the conversation that Margaret Mead had with James Bowl Baldwin, to really kind of intelligently talk about issues, agreeing to disagree, but really getting substantive and that it was just billed as, you know, the event of the year.

[Interviewer]

In the middle. I'm going to play a little bit of the middle of this. NPR's Fresh Air has audio of the event where they did get into, get into it a little bit, each presenting their side and you could hear the audience react. Acting. We'll take a listen.

[Robert Brustein]

I think you have probably the best mind of the 17th century. What you're describing is a 17th century condition. August, you're not describing a 20th century condition. You speak of most blacks being Locked out of the house. That continues to be true, but it is not as true as it was in the 17th century. You speak of people being brought to this country, and that is true. And it is the original sin of this country. He speaks of black people being brought to this country in chains. And that is the original sin of this nation, which, like all original sin, will probably never be expiated, but this country is trying to expiate it. And the fact is that to declare that you have African blood in your veins 300 years, you know, after you left Africa.

[Interviewer]

Let's listen to a little bit of August Wilson's argument.

[Robert Brustein]

I find this is some of the most outrageous things I've ever heard.

[Patti Hartigan]

Jump in, please.

[Robert Brustein]

I can understand. I'm saying that in the same way that Lorraine Hansberry said that in Raising in the Sun.

[Patti Hartigan]

But you do, you are, you are aware that in the 17th century we were slaves. Blacks in America were slaves. You're aware of that?

[Robert Brustein]

Of course I'm aware.

[Patti Hartigan]

Okay.

[Interviewer]

Patty, did anything come of this brouhaha? Did anything change?

[Patti Hartigan]

That's a really interesting question. I have to go back to 1991. I get into this in my afterword, in my book, when my colleague Diane Lewis and I wrote a series called the Fine Arts A World Without Color for the Boston Globe. And it was a four day page one series with, you know, all the Boston institutions, all the national institutions looking at staffs and boards and what's on stage, what's on the walls, who's in the box office, et cetera, the, the art world in, in this country. And at the time, in 1991, half the people said, how dare you, how dare you take on the fine arts? We have no obligation to do this. Then you fast forward to. And some of the people said, oh, thank you for saying this. You Fast forward to 1997, when August Wilson has this, this speech and the debate in New York. And afterwards he was, he was interviewed time and again. There was a Charlie Rose interview where, you know, Charlie Rose said, well, look, you know, you have George Wolf at the Public Theater, you have Kenny Leon at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta. And August Wilson said, you know what? Nothing has changed. Just because you have two people leading two theaters. The only people I see at these theaters I go to around the country who are people of color are the janitor staff. And then fast forward to a pandemic in George Floyd in the aftermath of that. And now all arts institutions, you can go to any website right on their homepage. There's a diversity Initiative. And I hope they're genuine and I hope there really is change. But August Wilson would have told you on the day he died that he hadn't seen any change.

[Interviewer]

My guest is Patti Hartigan. We're discussing her book August A Life. It's our choice for full bio. In the last decade of his life, he was writing his final play, Radio Golf, which was produced on Broadway. After his death. Just a, you know, it was. Gosh, he died just months after he was diagnosed with liver cancer. Right?

[Patti Hartigan]

Yes. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And he was, he was young. He was only 60. From your research, did he have any unfinished business personally or professionally? Aside from Radio Golf going to Broadway, were there other things in that he wanted to do that he didn't get to do?

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, there were so many things he had. I told you, he had that novel that he talked about. I don't know how many pages he had, but he had started writing the novel. He had that comedy. He also said that he wanted. It's funny that he said late in his life that he wouldn't mind writing some screenplays, but he didn't want them to have anything to do with issues of race. He wanted to write comedies. He wanted to lighten up. He had actually taken up painting. And I, when I interviewed him in 2005, who's. A few months before he was diagnosed, he said that he had read some article that said that painters live longer than writers. Said, I'm taking up paint. So he wanted, I think he wanted to work in another medium. I mean, he had written those 10 plays. Phenomenal output, phenomenal change in the American theater. I mean, the legacy is extraordinary. But, yeah, I think he wanted to kick back a little bit. He. He said that you, you. He would never write the words, the end at the end of a play unless he had either an image or a first sentence or a scene or an idea for the next project. So he had already had, he already had so many projects he had been planning.

[Interviewer 2]

There are so many people that are mentioned in the book that we didn't get a chance to talk about. Amy Saltz, the director, Todd Kreitler, who worked with him on his. His One man play. Is there any person that we haven't mentioned that you think is important when we're thinking about the life of August Wilson?

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, yeah. You know what? I will. I will say a word about Marion McClinton. I mentioned Claude Purdy, who was August Wilson's friend, but he did not choose him to replace Lloyd Richards. When he split with Lloyd Richards, he He tapped Marion McClinton, who was also from St. Paul. Playwright, actor. He had been in the Original Jitney, the one act production that Penumbra did in 1980 and those two were very tight. Yeah, he directed the last few plays and then he got sick and he had to drop out of Gem of the Ocean. And so, I mean, it was complicated. Todd Kreidler was also really, really, really significant in his life. He kind of adopted him as a surrogate son. And the two of them, the two of them were volatile. They were fight with each other but they, they did it with love. He, Todd, became his dramaturg. And of course I did mention Charles Johnson who he had a really close relationship and felt Charles Johnson welcomed him to the city of Seattle and they would go out for these late night dinners that rolled on and on from, you know, you start with an appetizer and then the next thing you know it's 3 o' clock in the morning and it. Charles Johnson wrote a great essay about it in a collection called Nighthawks.

[Interviewer]

In your author's note you write, I first met August Wilson at the Eugene O' Neill Theater center in 1987. And the descriptions of the O' Neill are from my direct experience as a fellow in the National Critics Institute and numerous visits to the o' Neill over the years. I also interviewed Wilson many times as a critic and arts reporter for the Boston Globe. I spent several days interviewing him in Seattle in January 2005 for a Boston Globe Magazine profile. One man, 10 plays, 100 years. The wide ranging interviews covered his entire life. Many of the quotations in this book are drawn from those interviews, as is the opening scene in chapter 19. Many of Wilson's intimate letters and early plays and poetry are paraphrased. Because August Wilson's estate declined authorization of this book, I hope readers will get a sense of his eloquence nonetheless. Did you get a sense of why they declined to be authorization of the book?

[Patti Hartigan]

You know, that was a conversation. There were a bunch of lawyers in rooms in New York and agents and I just couldn't agree to it didn't work out. I think there was a little more control wanted than I was that a journalist can give and that's really all. I don't have anything negative to say. I got. I did the best I could with what I had. And does it make it harder? Does it make you work harder? Absolutely. But the people in, in the August Wilson world and in his universe were amazing and fabulous and the libraries were terrific and a lot of people keep a lot of things you learn when you start looking at somebody's life.

[Interviewer 2]

What is the legacy of August Wilson?

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, he changed the American theater. Don't you agree? I mean, he. He opened it up in a way that it. It should have been opened up before, but had not been. He wrote a great play, 10 great plays that also chronicle the black experience. So he changed the theater, but he wrote a record of. Of stories. And, you know, the characters in his, in his plays are not superheroes. They're. They're regular people who did extraordinary things. And I think those two things are the legacy, what he did for the theater and the work that he left behind.

[Interviewer 2]

The name of the book is August A Life. My guest has been Patti Hartigan. Patti, thank you for giving us so much time.

[Patti Hartigan]

Oh, thank you for doing this. This program is terrific and all writers are grateful.

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[Patti Hartigan]

I need a coffee.

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