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Playwright August Wilson was one of the American theater's most ambitious and visionary talents. His death from liver cancer at age 60 is a loss not just to the black community from which he emerged, but to contemporary American culture at large.
Wilson grew up poor in a two-room Pittsburgh apartment with his mother and five siblings. He supported his writing by working as a gardener, a dishwasher and a storeroom clerk.
His singular achievement was constructing a 10-play cycle that dramatized the struggles and progress of blacks across the 20th century, one decade at a time.
"Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," his 1984 breakthrough work, focused on a blues singer's battles against racism in the 1920s recording industry. The final piece in the cycle, "Radio Golf," set in the late '90s, premiered in Los Angeles in August.
Among many honors, Wilson won the 1987 Tony Award for best drama for "Fences" (which also won him one of his two Pulitzer Prizes) and numerous New York Drama Critics awards.
Just last month came perhaps the most fitting epilogue for this man who brought the vitality of the African-American 20th century experience to the stage: The Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns five houses on Broadway, announced Sept. 1 that the Virginia Theater would be renamed the August Wilson Theater - the first such Broadway honor for an African-American.
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