An Analysis of August Wilson's Life, Works, and The Pittsburgh Cycle

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the life and works of August Wilson, a prominent American playwright. It begins with an executive summary highlighting his significance, particularly focusing on The Pittsburgh Cycle, a series of ten plays exploring the African American experience in the 20th century. The report delves into Wilson's early life, including his birth, family background, and formative experiences that shaped his perspective. It then explores his career, including the establishment of the Black Horizon Theatre and the development of The Pittsburgh Cycle, with each play set in a different decade and addressing themes of race, art, and the evolving African American lifestyle. The report also details Wilson's accomplishments, including his two Pulitzer Prizes and other awards, before concluding with his death and lasting legacy. The report references key plays such as Fences, The Piano Lesson, and Jitney, offering insight into Wilson's contributions to American theatre. The references used are also listed at the end of the document.

Running head: LIFE AND WORKS OF AUGUST WILSON
Life and Works of August Wilson
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1LIFE AND WORKS OF AUGUST WILSON
Executive Summary
August Wilson (1945 – 2005) was a well-known playwright of America who was
famously known for a series of ten plays, which are known as the The Pittsburgh Cycle. This
Cycle of ten plays are the ones that earned the playwright two Pulitzer Prizes for his career as
playwright of American Drama. This report will look at the career of August Wilson and the
subjects that The Pittsburgh Cycle deals with in each of the drama. It will also deal with the
awards known by Wilson for his work.

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Table of Contents
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Introduction
August Wilson was a well-known American playwright who was known for his
creation of ten major plays during his life. These plays came to be known as The Pittsburgh
Cycle and it focuses on the comic and the tragic aspects of the African American lifestyle in
the U.S.A. throughout the 20th century. It was for his contribution to the plays in the
American settings that he got awarded with two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. This research will
look at the life and the works of the playwright named August Wilson.
Discussion
Early Life
August Wilson was born under the actual name of Frederick August Kittel Jr. in
Pittsburgh Pennsylvania to a baker/pastry cook and a housewife. The neighbourhood that he
grew up in mostly comprised of black skinned people and the Jewish Americans and the
Italian immigrants from other parts of the country. Soon however, his mother divorced his
father to marry another person which greatly affected August Wilson. This is because it is for
this reason that they faced racial discrimination from other people when they moved into their
new territory. All these racial attacks on their houses really affected Wilson which gets
reflected in the plays that he wrote.
Wilson joined Central Catholic High School as part of 14 schools students but
dropped out after a year. Later he joined Cornelly Valley National School, but again dropped
out from there too as he felt that the curriculum of the school is challenging for him. Since
then, he worked on a variety of other jobs before he found his calling as a playwright. His
changing jobs created problems with his mother as she wanted him to be a lawyer but Wilson
himself wanted to be a writer. When forced to leave the home, he joined the United States

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army for three years but he resigned after a year and went back to doing various kinds of
other jobs like gardening, cook etc.
Career
Wilson changed his name after his father’s death in 1965 as a method of honouring
his mother. He bought a typewriter and began to write as he considered himself to be a writer
and started writing whenever he found free time (Wilson, 2017). He found a strong interest in
the teachings of Malcolm X as well as the philosophies of the religion of Islam and the black
power. All this motivated him to change his religion to Islam.
As stated by Sternlitz (2015), it was also during this same time that he founded the
Black Horizon Theatre along with his friend Rob Penny in 1968 in the state of Pennsylvania.
The first play that Wilson directed in this theatre that he found with his friend was called
Recycling which was shown in front of a small number of audiences. Some of the other plays
that are among his early career include The Homecoming which was directed by Vernell
Lillie as well as Sizwe Banzi is Dead at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre. This was also his first
professional play. Later Wilson formed the Kuntu Writers Workshop with his friend Penny
and the poet Masha Baton. This was done to bring the African American writers together and
to help them in both production and publication. However, Wilson’s major accomplishment
is the The Pittsburgh Cycle which comprises of a series of ten plays.
The Pittsburgh Cycle
As stated by Shannon (2015), The Pittsburgh Cycle are a series of ten plays written by
August Wilson during his lifetime that earned him a lot of accomplishments and praise in his
career. The story of the play is each set in a decade different to each other and deal with
various experiences that are faced by the Blacks during the 20th Century America. It also aims

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to find the racial discriminations on the black people of America. The cycle consists of ten
different plays that are as follows:
Jitney - The play was released in the year 1982 and was based on story inside the worn gypsy
cab in Pennsylvania in the year 1977.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom – The play was released in the year 1982 and was based on the
issues of art, race and black recording artist exploitation in Chicago in the 1920’s.
Fences – The play was released in the year 1985 and deals with the evolving African
American experiences and issues of race.
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone – The play was released in 1986 and is the second part of his
African American experience.
The Piano Lesson – A 1987 play by August Wilson which deals with one’s own abilities.
Two Trains Running – A 1992 play with the focus on the changing attitudes towards race.
Seven Guitars – A 1995 play focusing on seven African characters in the year 1948.
King Hedley II – This play examines the African American life in United States in the 20th
Century.
Gem of the Ocean – A 2003 play which dramatizes the African American life of the 20th
century.
Radio Golf – This is a 2005 play that is based on a homeless person in America.

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Accomplishments and Awards
Wilson won two Pulitzer Awards for Drama, one for Fences (1985) for which he also
won a Tony Award. The second Pulitzer Award that he won was for The Piano Lesson
(1990). Wilson also won a New York Drama Critics Circle Award for this play. Apart from
such awards, he also won numerous other awards for his other dramas (Li, 2018).
Death
August Wilson was reported to be diagnosed with liver cancer in June 2005 and had
three to five months to live. He died on October, 2005 at the age of 60 and was buried at
Greenwood Cemetery in Pennsylvania (Gale, 2016).
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be stated that August Wilson was indeed one of the
best Playwrights to appear in the United States of America. Through the plays that he wrote,
Wilson always portrayed the experiences that the African Americans faced in the country in
the 20th century. Thus, he is truly said to be one of the best playwrights of America.

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Reference List
Gale, C. L. (2016). A Study Guide for August Wilson's" Joe Turner's Come and Gone". Gale,
Cengage Learning.
Li, Y. (2018). August Wilson's Presentation of Interracial Movements in 1960s. English
Language Teaching, 11(6), 41-46.
Shannon, S. G. (2018). August Wilson and his critics. The Routledge Companion to African
American Theatre and Performance, 36.
Shannon, S. G. (Ed.). (2015). August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle: Critical Perspectives on the
Plays. McFarland.
Shannon, S. G., & Richards, S. L. (Eds.). (2016, June). Approaches to Teaching the Plays of
August Wilson. Modern Language Association.
Sternlicht, S. (2015). August Wilson's Twentieth-century Cycle Plays: A Reader's
Companion. Texas Tech University Press.
Wilson, A. (2016). Fences (Vol. 6). Penguin.
Wilson, A. (2017). Jitney: A Play-Broadway Tie-In Edition. Abrams.