Wilson Dead

I'm not sure what most "pop culture" fans would make of that title, which "Wilson" they would assume had died. Owen? Luke? The Wilson in question is neither, of course, but instead the playwright August Wilson. Wilson died yesterday, and only disclosed the liver cancer that was the cause of death in August. At only 60, Wilson's death is indeed a shock--one imagines that he had a lot of writing left in him.

Many would argue that Wilson will, if he hasn't already, join the very short list of true world-class American playwrights whose work will endure for generations: Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and, I'd argue, Stephen Sondheim. That Wilson belongs in such rarefied company can be argued, I suppose, but I suspect that that ultimate arbiter, time, will put him right there on that theatrical American Mount Rushmore.

Wilson's enduring legacy will be what he spent most of his career working on: a 10-play cycle chronicling the African-American legacy in America in the 20th century, one play per decade. The final play, Radio Golf, only premiered this year. I've seen productions, excellent productions put on by Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts, of only two Wilson plays, The Piano Lesson and Joe Turner's Come and Gone and they were wonderful in their judicious use of poetry, story-telling, myth-making, music, and theatricality to tell larger-than-life stories about working-class and poor blacks in Pittsburgh. That I haven't seen others is one of those deficiencies in the total sum of the art I've taken in that I really need to rectify. I have read a few of the other plays, and am eagerly awaiting the inevitable single volume collecting all 10 plays in one book. That will be a reading experience worth cherishing.

Until Whenever