AugustWilson.net
August Wilson's Final Act
Tributes, music and the playwright's own words
Sunday, October 09, 2005
By Bob Hoover, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
August Wilson made a final visit to the Hill District yesterday as his funeral procession drove through his old neighborhood, the birthplace of the works that made him one of America's greatest playwrights.
Sending him off on that last journey was trumpeter Wynton Marsalis' haunting version of "Danny Boy" closing Mr. Wilson's funeral at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall in Oakland.
Gordon Davison, former head of the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, left, and actor Anthony Chisholm after the service.
About 400 attended the two-hour program, a mixture of tributes, music and the playwright's own words. Mr. Wilson's dark-brown burnished casket lay center stage, surrounded by flowers, ferns and wreaths.
He died a week ago today at age 60 in Seattle, his home since 1990, from liver cancer.
Honoring him were friends and colleagues, local and national:
City Councilman Sala Udin, one of the original members along with Mr. Wilson of Black Horizons Theater in the 1970s; actress Phylicia Rashad, who appeared in his ninth play, "Gem of the Ocean"; Pittsburgher Chawley P. Williams, a longtime friend and fellow "Centre Avenue poet"; actor Charles Dutton, who played a major role in "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," Mr. Wilson's first Broadway play, in 1984; and Kenny Leon, now directing "Radio Golf," Mr. Wilson's last play.
Officiating was the Rev. Dwight Andrews, a former actor and musician long associated with the playwright.
"We are here to celebrate our brother, the poet August Wilson, a native son of Pittsburgh who demanded that his voice be heard," the Rev. Andrews said.
Marion McClinton, director of several Broadway productions including "Jitney," "Ma Rainey" and "Gem of the Ocean," delivered the eulogy. He called it "the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life."
"August Wilson changed the lives of young men and women, of old men and women, of men and women in between, black, white, red, yellow. If they came from Mars, he changed them."
Mr. Wilson, he said, "loved his people and he would not let them not love themselves. ... We had to thank him for every second that he was here. Godspeed, August Wilson, and may the road be even."
Actors read selections from four Wilson plays, starting with Mr. Dutton from "Fences."
"Death ain't nothin' but a fastball on the outside corner. That's all death is to me," read Mr. Dutton as Troy Maxson, the hero of Mr. Wilson's first Broadway hit and winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize.
Maxson's character was based partly on the life of Josh Gibson, the Hall of Fame baseball player whose race barred him from the Major Leagues after he became a star with the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords.
Mr. Dutton also recalled seeing Mr. Wilson for the first time and thinking, "He looks like an insurance salesman. What does he know about plays?"
But, Mr. Dutton said he discovered the power of a Wilson scene:
"I learned as an actor that the only way to do the work is to leave an ounce of your internal essence on the stage floor every night."
Ms. Rashad performed a speech by Aunt Ester, the role she played in "Gem of the Ocean," earlier this year on Broadway.
She called "Gem" "the jewel" of Mr. Wilson's 10-play cycle covering every decade of the 20th century. All but "Ma Rainey" are set in the Hill.
Actor Anthony Chisholm read from "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," and Ruben Santigo-Hudson played the funeral director West from "Two Trains Running."
"Ain't nothin' you do in life compares with death," was West's comment.
Mr. Udin and Mr. Williams delivered the Pittsburgh history of Mr. Wilson's biography, the years when as young men, they tried to give voice to the struggles of a community threatened by urban renewal, poverty and discrimination.
"August Wilson, Rob Penny (the playwright who died in 2003) and I drank coffee together every day at the same restaurant and talked and talked," Mr. Udin recalled.
Next door was a jitney stand and Mr. Wilson would chat with the drivers.
"Those days were the genesis of 'Jitney.' and 'Jitney' was the genesis of the Pittsburgh Cycle," Mr. Udin said.
"Jitney" was an early Wilson one-act play, later expanded into a full-scale production.
"August Wilson gave us the reality of where we've been and how we got there," Mr. Udin said. "He rescued the history (of African-Americans) and gave it coherent cultural significance."
Mr. Udin added that a major Wilson celebration is being planned here early next year.
Following Mr. Marsalis' performance, Mr. Wilson's family -- his widow, Constanza Romero, daughters Azula Wilson and Sekina Ansari, four sisters, Freda Ellis, Linda Jean Kittel, Donna Conley and Barbara Wilson and two brothers, Edwin and Richard Kittel -- accompanied his body in a car procession through the Hill and to Greenwood Memorial Park Cemetery in O'Hara, where he was buried in a private ceremony.
Correction/Clarification: (Published Oct. 11, 2005) August Wilson's four sisters, Freda Ellis, Linda Jean Kittel, Donna Conley and Barbara Wilson, attended Mr. Wilson's Oct. 8, 2005 funeral in Oakland. Barbara Wilson's name was originally omitted from this story on the funeral in the Sunday editions of Oct. 9, 2005.
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