O’Mahony, “American Centurian.”
Guardian
, December 13,
2002
(see
theguardian.com/stage/2002/dec/14/theatre
.artsfeatures).
ACT TWO
Rows
“I dropped out of school, but I didn’t drop out of life”: August
Wilson, “Feed Your Mind, the Rest Will Follow.”
Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette
, March 28, 1999 (see old.post-gazette/magazine
/feedmind.asp).
“I always tried to go in everyone’s way . . . what I called myself”:
Ralph Ellison,
Invisible Man
. New York: Random House, Modern
Library edition, 1952 (p. 433).
Poet of the Hill
“Thrift shop. Fifty Cents”: Lahr, “Been Here and Gone” (p. 58).
“When I was a windy boy and a bit/And the black spit of the chapel
fold . . .”: Excerpt from “Lament” by Dylan Thomas,
The Collected
Poems of Dylan Thomas
. New York: New Directions, 1957 (p. 194).
“Well, that’s my business . . . he’s learnin’”: Author’s words
loosely based on lines in act one, scene three, of
Jitney
(1982)
.
Friends Can Be Persistent
“How do you make them talk?” and “Oh, you don’t—you listen to
them”: Ben Brantley, “Theater: The World That Created August
Wilson.”
New York Times
, February 5, 1995, sec. 2, pp. 1–5 (see
nyti.ms/2fCwDFQ).
“You should make that into a play”: David Savran,
In Their Own Words:
Contemporary Playwrights.
New York: Theatre Communications Group,
1988 (p. 291).
“I can’t write plays, man”: Dennis Watlington, “Hurdling
Fences
.”
Vanity Fair
, April 1989 (p. 108).
Goin’ Up North
“Why don’t you come out . . .”: Ibid.
Voices
“Jitneys” or “gypsy cabs” were unlicensed taxis that delivered
passengers to and from areas of the city where licensed taxi drivers
refused to go.
Bits and Pieces
Two of Wilson’s plays,
The Piano Lesson
and
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
,
began with a single image from Romare Bearden’s paintings.
However, those particular images were not in this first book of
Bearden’s that Wilson saw.
A Very Good Recipe
Little Brothers of the Poor
is a social services organization
founded in Paris after World War II. The Minneapolis/St. Paul
chapter opened in 1971. Wilson worked there as a cook.
“I’m just tired . . . what you ain’t spent”: Lines spoken by the
character Becker in
Jitney
, act one, scene two (1982).
Arriving
Sections 1, 2: This is 1982; August Wilson is thirty-seven
years old. Section 3:
Ma Rainey
opened at the Cort Theater on
Broadway in October 1984.
Cycle
“Write one play for each decade of the twentieth century”:
Wilson achieved this goal. The last of his ten-play “cycle,”
Radio
Golf,
premiered at the Yale Repertory Theater in April 2005.
Wilson died on October 2, 2005.
“He’s already working on the next one . . .”: Refers to
Fences
(1985)
.
Author’s Note
“I crawl up inside the material . . .”: Bill D. Moyers,
A World of Ideas
(Betty Sue Flowers, ed.). New York: Doubleday, 1989 (p. 178).
Opposite Page
“I left Pittsburgh . . .”: From “Feed Your Mind, the Rest Will
Follow: An Op-Ed Column.”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, March 28,
1999 (see old.post-gazette.com/magazine/feedmind.asp).
Copyright Page
“I don’t write for black people or white people . . .”:
Vera
Sheppard,
“August Wilson: An Interview,” from
Conversations with
August Wilson
(Jackson R. Bryer, Mary C. Hartig, eds.). Jackson,
MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2006 (p. 109).
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
Bigsby, Christopher, ed.
The Cambridge Companion to August Wilson.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Bryer, Jackson R., and Mary C. Hartig, eds
.
Conversations with
August Wilson.
Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi,
2006.
Glasco, Laurence A. and Christopher Rawson.
August Wilson:
Pittsburgh Places in His Life and Plays
. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh
History & Landmarks Foundation, 2015.
Herrington, Joan.
I Ain’t Sorry for Nothin’ I Done: August Wilson’s Pro-
cess of Playwriting
. New York: Limelight Editions, 1998.