May All Your Fences Have Gates: Essyas on the Drama of August Wilson

Annotated Bibliography of Works by and about August Wilson

SANDRA G. SHANNON Annotated Bibliography of Works by and about August Wilson Critical assessment of August Wilson's plays has increased in scope and in momentum over the last decade. Although he wrote his first play in 1973 (Recycle), serious attention to his work did not come until the early 1980s with the Broadway success ofMa Rainey's Black Bottom (1981). Now Wilson is one of the most-written-about dramatists in America, capturing the respect and admiration of some of New York's toughest critics and inspiring a wellspring of scholarly activity about the plays that make up his proposed tenplay chronicle of the black experience. Published commentary on his work has likewise evolved from an abundance of theater reviews of works staged along a familiar path from the Yale Repertory Theater to Broadway. Every effort was made to include as many references to Wilson's work as possible in the annotated bibliography that follows. However, because of an already voluminous and steadily increasing supply of published material on him and his work (some of which has yet to be catal~ged and therefore remains irretrievable), several references may not be included here. Extensive though it may be, this annotated bibliography is not all-inclusive; it is instead intended as a starting place for anyone doing preliminary research on August Wilson. The bibliography is the result of a two-year research mission funded by a faculty research grant from Howard University that allowed me to make several productive trips to the Yale School of Drama Library to examine what is the largest and most organized collection of published information on Wilson to date. Housed here is a repository of news clippings and cataloged information on the various performances staged specifically at the Yale Repertory Theater as well as at various other locales throughout the United States. ANN 0 TAT E D BIB L lOG RAP H Y 231 In some instances parts of certain citations may not include page numbers or dates, largely because of the abbreviated format used by the New England Newsclip Service, an official news-collecting firm to which the Yale School of Drama Library subscribes. In addition to the New England Newsclip Service, St. Louis University librarian Chester S. Bunnell graciously donated his working bibliography on August Wilson to the project. Howard University graduate student Charles Tita also assisted me by conducting a thorough search for pertinent materials at the Library of Congress and at major university libraries in the Washington , D.C., area. Homero Lurns, my English department colleague, was very helpful as a human resource in providing me not only with recent clippings of news on Wilson but also-since he is a black music buff-much insight into his use of the blues. Other sources below were located by consulting the New York Times Theater Reviews and relying upon my own detectivelike fervor to collect and read every published item pertinent to August Wilson. BY WILSON PLAYS Black Bart and the Sacred Hills. Unpublished script, written in 1977. Produced in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1981. Sprawling musical satire featuring twenty-seven characters based upon a series of poems about a legendary rustler named Black Bart. Considered to be Wilson's debut as a serious dramatist. The Coldest Day ofthe Year. Unpublished script, written in 1977. Produced in 1989. One-act experiment with ritual and absurdist drama. Encounter between a man and a woman at a bus stop during the bleakest part ofwinter. Eskimo Song Duel: The Case ofthe Borrowed Wife. Unpublished script, written in 1979. One of several short scripts written while employed at the Science Museum of Minnesota. Eight-page war of words between a skilled Eskimo huntsman and a clumsy, undeserving rival husband. Wife goes to the superior huntsman, who wins verbal contest. An Evening with Margaret Mead. Unpublished script, date unavailable. One of several short scripts written while employed at the Science Museum of Minnesota. One-woman play composed of comments by Mead as she considers an invitation to deliver a lecture at the Pacific Arts Council. Fences. Written in 1983. Produced in New Haven in 1985; in New York in 1987. 232 lit. N NOT lit. TED BIB L lOG R lit. P H Y Published in New York by New American Library in 1986; earned Wilson his first Pulitzer Prize in drama in 1987. Plight of an urban black family on the eve of the...