August Wilson Journal

Updates from the August Wilson Archive at Pitt Library System

2022-10-18T15:50:59-04:00

Dr. Leah Mickens and William Daw provide an update on the August Wilson Archive acquired by the University of Pittsburgh in the fall of 2020.

August Wilson’s Signification on the Kójódá within the “Structurally Conservative” Fences

2022-10-19T13:27:04-04:00

Despite being hailed as August Wilson’s “most structurally conservative work . . . modeled on the well-made play” (Savran 20), the plot of Fences signifies on a Yorùbá concept of measuring time, the Kójódá, and thus, the play has an Ethnocultural Dramatic Structure. Within an EDS framework the usual posts along which well-made plays are developed—exposition, inciting incident, climax, falling action, and resolution—are influenced by and/or at times, wholly subordinate to the African cultural and/or temporal signifiers of the racial or ethnic group at the center of the text. In this fashion, Wilson dramatically treats the experiences of Black Americans, with full cognizance of Western formulaic constructions in playwriting, yet the social behaviors of his characters and his plotlines are propelled by identifiable diasporic formations of indigenous African practices and concepts.

“Hear Me Talking to You”: Improvisation and the Auricular Imperative in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

2022-10-18T15:50:59-04:00

Students of August Wilson’s play have heretofore focused almost exclusively on the title song and have thus not heard that the plot actually revolves around an auricular imperative set forth by another tune recorded at the session, “Hear Me Talking to You.” Its rehearsal and recording augur that the deadly violence is ultimately propelled by a failure to listen much more so than by the racial exigencies of America’s Jazz Age. Unlike the solitary act of writing, collective music-making depends crucially on aural connectivity—just as actors on stage must also listen to each other. This auricular imperative, then, is also an ethical one as it demands an openness and receptiveness to the story of the other. In music, especially in improvised music, self-actualization is subject to an ethics of responsible listening: successful music-making therefore comes with an interpersonal accountability to the sonorities of the others’ stories. Combining the two defining blues tropes of travel and of love gone wrong, the auricular imperative issued by “Hear Me Talking to You” applies to Ma Rainey, the Mother of the Blues, as much as to Levee Green, the young, upstart jazz modernist. Hence, Wilson’s play dramatizes listening as a profoundly ethical act, a paramount act whose obviation can bring tragic consequences. Ironically, George C. Wolfe’s cinematographic transposition of the play mutes the auricular imperative, returning the characters to the same old spiraling groove of the American race “record” instead of ending, as Wilson’s script does, on the self-actualizing potential inherent in musical improvisation.

Finding Frederick "Fritz" Kittel

2022-10-18T15:50:59-04:00

August Wilson Journal editors Christopher B. Bell and Ladrica Menson-Furr interviewed Johannes Feest via Zoom about his research into August Wilson’s father Frederick “Fritz” Kittel. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.