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August Wilson


American
April 27, 1945
Playwright
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All art is political in the sense that it serves someone's politics.


August Wilson
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As soon as white folks say a play's good, the theater is jammed with blacks and whites.


August Wilson
Tags: Good Say Play
From Romare Bearden I learned that the fullness and richness of everyday life can be rendered without compromise or sentimentality.
August Wilson
I write for myself, and my goal is bringing that world and that experience of black Americans to life on the stage and giving it a space there.
August Wilson
In 1977, I wrote a series of poems about a character, Black Bart, a former cattle rustler-turned-alchemist. A good friend, Claude Purdy, who is a stage director, suggested I turn the poems into a play.
August Wilson
Tags: Good About Who
Between speeches and awards, you can find something to do every other week. It's hard to write. Your focus gets splintered. Once you put one thing in your calendar, that month is gone.
August Wilson
I think it was the ability of the theater to communicate ideas and extol virtues that drew me to it. And also, I was, and remain, fascinated by the idea of an audience as a community of people who gather willingly to bear witness.
August Wilson
Tags: People Me Think
I work as an artist, and I think the audience of one, which is the self, and I have to satisfy myself as an artist. So I always say that I write for the same people that Picasso painted for. I think he painted for himself.
August Wilson
Tags: Work People Think
The blues are important primarily because they contain the cultural expression and the cultural response to blacks in America and to the situation that they find themselves in. And contained in the blues is a philosophical system at work. And as part of the oral tradition, this is a way of passing along information.
August Wilson
Tags: Work Because Way
I don't look at our society today too much. My focus is still in the past, and part of the reason is because what I do - the wellspring of art, or what I do - l get from the blues. So I listen to the music of a particular period that I'm working on, and I think inside the music is clues to what is happening with the people.
August Wilson