Is August Wilson Americas Greatest Playwright?
(Interview) Ebony, Sept, 2001, by Charles Whitaker STANDING behind a lectern on a makeshift stage at Chicago’s Printer’s Row Bookfair–an annual celebration of literature and authors housed in what once was the city’s old bookbinding district–playwright August Wilson, one of the featured speakers of the day, morphs into a cast of characters culled from his native Pittsburgh, the city that inspires and influences so much of his work. As the occasionally scatological dialogue spills from Wilson’s mouth, the listeners are transported to a Black pool hall, a lunch counter or a barber shop, where wisdom and wisecracks mix in equal measure. In fact, the mini-drama Wilson plays out is so dead-on accurate, so true to the rhyme and ring of Black talk in Anywhere, USA, that it feels as though a tape recorder lodged in Wilson’s brain has just been activated, issuing the jumble of voices. To a certain extent, the voices and emotions Wilson conjures up are practically embedded on a reel in his hea
