Notes to a Survey on August Wilson

By the end of 2025, the Black Power Movement will approach its 60th anniversary, marking a memorable moment in American history. This movement played a crucial role in shaping national and global discussions on the intrinsic value of culture and heritage, through its historical legacy initiated by The Black Arts Movement, known as the Black Aesthetics Movement, and the artistic and cultural sister movement of the Black Power Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School, led by Amiri Baraka, was a turning point for Black arts, driven by many Black artists.

Q1: As an expert on August Wilson's Century Cycle, how do you view his legacy in the Black Arts Movement? Do you see Wilson as part of that movement? Do you believe his creative collaborations led to a theatrical vision that uniquely centralized Black life and culture through its mission, values, and artistic approach? If you view August Wilson as a singular movement rather than part of the Black Arts Movement, how would you define his vision, mission, and values as a playwright? What aspects of his work make him a uniquely creative force in American theater?

Interesting set of questions. Most scholars date the Black Arts Movement beginning in 1965 with Malcolm X’s assassination and extending to 1975. A corollary question might be “why did the Black Arts Movement end” when it did but we will save that for another time. Technically and chronologically, Wilson’s emergence as a serious playwright came after the end of the movement, it was 1979 he wrote the first edition of Jitney, though he wrote poetry and some plays during its heyday. But Wilson definitely saw himself as an heir to the movement and he cited strong connections to Amiri Baraka, the BAM founder, and Ed Bullins, a major BAM contributor of the BAM in his position as Minister of Culture in the Black Panther Party. Also, Wilson co-founded with Rob Penny the Black Horizon Theater in Pittsburgh in the late 1960’s, placing him squarely in the BAM realm and tying him inescapably to the BAM ethos of Black identity, self-determination, and cultural pride. Also, Wilson’s poetry during the period carried BAM’s militant tone and rhythmic style. So yes, I see Wilson as a participant in BAM, though his major work did not emerge until much later, after the BAM had, for all practical purposes, passed away.

Another stream of collaboration to consider is that of the artist Romare Bearden, another of Wilson’s state primary influence (4Bs). While Bearden’s work preceded the BAM for the most part by a whole generation, and while Bearden himself never identified or aligned himself with the BAM’s separatist, nationalist rhetoric, his depictions of Black urban and rural life echoed BAM’s call for art rooted in Black identity and history and in many ways was a precursor to BAM’s emphasis on cultural self-definition. It is easy to see the link between Wilson and Bearden, especially from the perspective of art (drama and visual art) as a storyteller of culture. Three Wilson plays in the Cycle emerged from the Bearden collaboration: Fences, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, and The Piano Lesson.

Borges is the least discussed of Wilson’s primary influences.Wilson left us some breadcrumbs in his interviews to consider, mainly focused on the structure of Borges’ storytelling. I suspect it goes much deeper. As displayed on my 4B model, Borges opens up Wilson to a wide range of classical authors and writers. Incidentally, Borges has a depository of papers at Pitt, so there is no excuse not to study both Wilson and Borges at once.

I do not see Wilson as a singular movement, but as an integral part of a continuum that extends from the poetry of Phyllis Wheatley through the pre-Harlem Renaissance poetry of Dunbar and McKay, to the folklore and anthropological work of Zora Neale Hurston (who Wilson never credits but whose effects can be seen throughout his work), to the art and artistry of the Harlem Renaissance, to the mid-century emergence of the Black Arts Movement in response to the revolutionary expressions of Malcolm X and others, straight through to Wilson’s Century Cycle. Wilson’s synthesis of this whole continuum into the ten plays of the American Century Cycle is what qualifies his work as a uniquely creative force in American theater.

_____________________

Through your guidance towards active reading strategies and instructional methods—collaborative discussion techniques and close reading, the 2022 Study Group on August Wilson's Century Cycle aimed to reflect on selected passages from each play. You often selected monologues, while others gravitated toward musical references. 

Q2: As time has passed, which passages remain close to your heart as part of Wilson's legacy, and which musical references (blues, spirituals, and dancing) and monologues in the Cycle resonate now with you the most? Do you agree that these musical forms and monologues impact cultural identity and Black storytelling? In what ways?

There are two characters I personally identify with in the Cycle. And so my favorite passages are from them. To begin, I have a list of quotables from Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom character, Toledo, the pianist of the Ma Rainey band. Here is a sampling:

"Everything changing all the time. Even the air you breathing change."

"I know what you talking about, but you don't know what I'm talking about."

"You gonna fit two propositions on the same track . . . run them into each other, and because they crash you gonna say it's the same train."  (Sounds Aristotelian!)

"Everybody got style. Style ain't nothing but keeping the same idea from beginning to end."

"Levee ain't got an eye for that. He wants to tie on to some abstract component and sit down on the elemental."

"Levee you worse than ignorant. You ignorant without a premise."

"That's what you call an African conceptualization. That's when you name the gods or call on the ancestors to achieve whatever your desires are."

"No eye for taking an abstract and fixing it to a specific."

"As long as the colored man look to white folks to put the crown on what he say . . . as long as he look to white folks for approval . . .then he ain't never gonna find out who he is and what he's about."

"That's the trouble with colored folks . . . always wanna have a good time. Good times get more niggers killed than God got ways to count."

"Some folks go arm in arm with the devil, shoulder to shoulder, and talk to him all the time."

"The colored man is the leftovers. Now, what's the colored man gonna do with himself? That's what we waiting to find out. But first we gotta know we the leftovers.”

My other favorite character is Bynum from Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Bynum’s monologue from Act 2 Scene 2 really resonates with me. He talks about his relationship with his father and how he (Bynum) finally “found his song.”

__________________________

The Cycle consistently employs similar theatrical elements and dramatic techniques, showcasing Wilson's creative skills and professional mastery, reflecting his foundational background, partly based on what you call "August Wilson's Art System 4Bs." Do you agree?

Q3:Concerning your model, can you tell more about the inspiration, motivation,  implications, and applications behind creating it? In what ways does your model contribute to the advancement of Wilson's legacy and practice in Black theatre and films?

Yes, I agree. Concerning my model, it begins with the 4B influences, the Blues, Borges, Baraka, and Bearden, from top, clockwise. Then with each influence, I did some reading to uncover what were their constituent primary influences, sort of the second order derivatives. But I also included names of artists Wilson mentioned in various interviews, providing a dotted line directly into the center circle. Borges provides the richest background of historical sources. I decided to place “the folkloric tradition” and “Zora Neale Hurston” on the outer perimeter, with connections to all secondary and tertiary influences. I think my model broadens Wilson’s legacy by showing relationships in his writing to a wider range of influences.

The rectangular shape of the page in landscape by definition allows more breadth for the horizontal axis, Bearden to Borges, and less breadth or space in general for the vertical axis, The Blues to Baraka. That was not necessarily intentional but I think it works. This probably bears a lot more discussion and I am grateful to you for the prompts.

Any model has limits. As I reflect, there are many more influences on Borges than what I have listed, and more on Baraka, and more on Bearden. It is not even clear to me that the ones I have chosen are somehow representative. The point is that by choosing the primary influences that Wilson chose, he has access to a wide and deep pool, practically infinite, of literary and music influences. That breadth is what I wanted to capture.

_____________________

August Wilson aimed to train and uplift African American artists by ensuring authentic representation on stage. 

Q4: In what ways does his storytelling bridge Black identity within his theatrical tradition and engage with broader cultural and global identities? In what ways does his Cycle contribute to global conversations about race, representation, culture, and identity in theater? 

I think it is Wilson’s use of folklore in his playwriting craft that goes the furthest in bridging black identity within his theatrical tradition and engages with broader cultural and global identities.Folklore is very specific, almost tribal, but in so far as all people have their own folklore, it is at once universal, relatable and accessible by all. Everybody “gets” for example, the breakdown in society in Two Trains Running between those who follow the way of the local prophet, those who follow the MLK type, those that follow the Malcolm X type, and those that stick with Aunt Ester. Same with the stories that Levee tells in Ma Rainey. Same with the entrepreneurial aspirations of King Hedley II. It is folklore that unites human beings into one huge family while allowing us to keep our individual tribes. As it says in the Holy Qur’an, God create us into tribes and nations so that we may know one another, not so that we may hate one another.

In producing the Cycle, we can get, concurrently, a panoramic view and a cross-sectional view of race, representation, culture, identity, in theater, in art, in everything

Please share any additional topics that further illuminate Wilson's creativity.

1. We need to take a deeper look at the event that brought Wilson and Baraka together, the assassination of Malcolm X, and the short-lived experiment both experienced with the Nation of Islam in the aftermath.

2. In future study groups, I want to take a deeper dive into Dante’s Divine Comedy and how its tentacles extend out to reach writers in both the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement.

3. I’d like to devote a study group to the classical Greek and Roman roots that live in Wilson’s work, both from the perspective of mythology (content) and from the aspect of drama (structure).

4. Via Bearden, we need to know more about how classical art informs Wilson’s work. I am talking about da Vinci, Van Gogh, Michelangelo, etc., all those guys. I think there is more there that we know, and Bearden is merely a portal.

5. Lastly, we are at a point in artificial intelligence where it may be interesting to start thinking about adding a set of interactive third acts to many of Wilson’s plays. I think Wilson would really dig that and each of his plays leave so many unanswered questions, daring us, begging to to consider what would happen if this? If that?, If the other?

Credits.

I used Wikipedia to look up details on the Black Arts Movement. I sent out structured queries to Grok3 (the X.ai) for ideas on Wilson and Bearden’s collaboration though 90% of my responses are my own.