Two other sections in the exhibit summon his writing life. Another installation honors Wilson's autobiographical monologue, "How I Learned What I Learned." The installations feature Wilson's personal effects along with costumes props and furniture from productions of the plays, including a 1956 Rock Ola jukebox from the 1990 Broadway staging of "Two Trains Running." There are also short videos about each play, with historical context and dialogue performed by the actors like Phylicia Rashad and Ruben Santiago-Hudson. And all but one of the plays are set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, where Wilson partly grew up and then came of age as a young man. Most spotlight working-class characters like trash collectors ("Fences"), recent migrants from the agricultural South ("The Piano Lesson"), blues musicians ("Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," "Seven Guitars"), mill workers ("Gem of the Ocean"), and unlicensed cab drivers ("Jitney").Īll 10 plays made it to Broadway "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson" won Pulitzers.
The plays explore the damage wrought by racism as well as the resilience and triumphs of Black Americans.
Ten are devoted to the works in the Century Cycle, each of which is set in a different decade of the 20th century. "Writer's Landscape" consists of 13 separate walk-through installations. "It was important to have a site where people could walk and immerse in August Wilson's work, learn about his influences, learn about how he worked and why he did the things that he did, why he wrote about specific topics in a specific way," said Center President and CEO Janis Burley Wilson, who oversaw the four-year project from start to finish. Paul, Minn., and then Seattle, but the city he grew up in continued to inform his work for the rest of his life. Wilson only lived in Pittsburgh until 1978, before moving to St. The center, which opened in 2009, is located just a half-mile from the brick rowhouse that was Wilson's own first home, in the historically Black neighborhood called the Hill District. Now there's " August Wilson: The Writer's Landscape," a permanent immersive and interactive exhibition at – where else? – Pittsburgh's August Wilson African American Cultural Center. Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson, who died in 2005, is one of the prides of Pittsburgh - yet until this week, there has been no site in his hometown where fans could go to experience the breadth of his legacy as a chronicler of the Black American experience through his monumental, 10-play Century Cycle.
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