August Wilson is dying

The West End has only recently entered the 21st-century by admitting local black artists — writers and directors — to tell their own indigenous stories, as was witnessed by the arrival earlier this year of Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Elmina’s Kitchen at the Garrick and the musical The Big Life at the Apollo (which has just announced an October 1 closure there, though associate producer Philip Hedley, who nutured it through two Stratford East runs, says this is only the beginning for the show that he now intends to tour).

But across on Broadway, August Wilson has long blazed a trail for African-American playwrights, and he has just completed the tenth (and final) play in his cycle of plays that have chronciled the black American experience set in each of the decades of the last century with Radio Golf, set in 1997, and taking place, like all but one of the other nine, in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. It premiered at New Haven’s Yale Repertory Theatre in April and is currently having its second production at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum.

However, with the completion of the cycle comes the sad news, too, that Wilson is dying. “It’s not like poker, you can’t throw your hand in,” he has said philosopically. “I’ve lived a blesed life. I’m ready.” He has been diagnosed with cancer that is too advanced to respond to treatment. He has been told that he has a life expectancy of three to five months. “I’m glad I finished the cycle,” he added.

In Britain, his work has been nurtured at the National (which offered Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and Jitney in an imported US production) and particularly at the Tricycle in Kilburn, who have previously offered The Piano Lesson, Two Trains Runnin’ and King Hedley II, and will in January offer Wilson’s most recent Broadway play, Gem of the Ocean.