Plays
Early Life
Themes
Career and Later Life
100
This cycle contains 10 plays and is also known as his "Century Cycle."
What is The Pittsburgh Cycle?
100
Birth date and place of August Wilson
What is April 27th, 1945 in Pittsburgh?
100
Sports discrimination is a theme of this Wilson play.
What is Fences? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ibfhw-kZxY
100
August Wilson died on October 2nd, 2005, of liver cancer at this age.
What is 60 years old?
200
Set in the 1930's, this play is about a family dealing with their history through the metaphor of a musical instrument.
What is The Piano Lesson? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32WzZqlN1h4
200
The author's ethnicity/ethnicities.
What is African American and German?
200
In Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, the dynamic between the white producers and the black performers highlights the theme of this.
What is social standings and racism? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUAJrmzf-bI
200
Wilson developed a close relationship with this repertory theatre, which is the only theatre to produce The Pittsburgh Cycle in it's entirety and his one man show "How I Learned What I Learned."
What is The Seattle Repertory Theatre?
300
Set in the 1950's, this play tells the story of a family headed by a character by the name of Troy who ends up with an illegitimate child through an extramarital affair.
What is Fences?
300
The author was given this name at birth.
What is Frederick August Kittel, Jr.?
300
Throughout all of Wilsons plays, especially The Piano Lesson, a character's personal identity is tied very closely to this.
What is cultural identity?
300
Due to Wilson's insistance on this, a film version of Fences was never made.
What is Wilson wanted an African-American director attached to the production?
400
Set in Chicago in the 1920's, this is the only play from The Pittsburgh Cycle that is not actually set in Pittsburgh.
What is Ma Rainey's Black Bottom?
400
August Wilson left these three institutions due to reasons such as threats and abuse, not being challenged enough, and accusations of plagiarism.
What is high school? Central Catholic High School, Connelley Vocational High School, and Gladstone High School
400
Wilson described this as "a construct of frustration, nostalgia, anger, and dream."
What is 20th century America?
400
These two plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
What is Fences and The Piano Lesson?
500
Names of 3 plays from The Pittsburgh Cycle that have not been mentioned.
What is Gem of the Ocean, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Seven Guitars, Two Trains Running, Jitney, King Hedley II, and/or Radio Golf?
500
While writing, Wilson was influenced by "The 4 B's": Romare Bearden, Amiri Baraka, Jorge Luis Borges, and this other phenomenon.
What is blues music?
500
All of Wilson's plays revolve around characters in search of this.
What is self-discovery?
500
The August Wilson Theatre, in the Broadway District of NYC, is significant because of this.
What is it is the first Broadway theatre to be named after an African-American? Bonus Question (for 2 points): Which production is currently housed by the August Wilson Theatre?
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