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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC Studio in SoHo. Thank you for spending part of your Friday with us. We've reached the last day of our Full Bio series discussing August Wilson: A Life by Patti Hartigan about the two-time, Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright described by The Atlantic as, "The man who transformed American theater." Wilson wrote an extraordinary 10-play cycle that traced Black American experiences through the 20th century.

Journalists and drama critic Patti Hartigan met Wilson in 1987 and interviewed him many times, including in-depth, free long-form piece that ran just before his death in 2005. Now, in addition to the book's, 50 pages of notes, Hartigan interviewed more than 100 people. She said she stopped counting at 110. It is noted in the book that the estate of August Wilson declined to make certain documents available. They couldn't agree on terms. We'll discuss why. First, we begin with an issue that became a cultural conversation in the 1990s, roles for Black actors.

Wilson was adamant that colorblind casting was the wrong way to go, and that more plays with Black characters and more supportive regional Black theater were needed for true diversity. Someone who publicly disagreed with him was another titan of theater. Robert Brustein, who just passed away in late October 2023. Brustein was once the Dean of the Yale Drama School, founder of Yale Rep Theater and the American Repertory Theater at Harvard. He was not shy about his opinion of some of Wilson's work writing, "Wilson has thus far limited himself to narrow aspects of the Black experience."

He was a champion of nonprofit theater, and he publicly chastised Wilson and director Lloyd Richards for taking the soon-to-be Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Piano Lesson to regional theaters when they knew it was headed for Broadway. For what it's worth, Richards had replaced Brustein at Yale, and some thought it was Brustein's critique was in part professional jealousy. Wilson did not stay quiet about Brustein's comments.

When he was asked to speak at a professional organization in June 1996, he took the time to say what he thought his speech titled, The Ground on which I Stand had some strong words for Brustein, and it went the 1990s version of viral. The men bickered back and forth in the press, and finally took their disagreement to the stage in a debate at the Town Hall in January of 1997, moderated by Anna Deavere Smith. We'll hear some of it in this final installment of our conversation about August Wilson: A Life.

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Alison Stewart: August Wilson gave a famous speech they delivered at a Theatre Communications Group Conference in Princeton, New Jersey in 1996. It's called The Ground on which I Stand Speech. Patti, he said the quiet part out loud that Black playwrights and theaters are underfunded and underappreciated and under-considered, and that colorblind casting was an insult because the Black experience mattered. We'll talk a little bit more about the speech and the response to the speech, but how did he end up giving this speech in the first place?

Patti Hartigan: Theatre Communications has this annual conference, which is a gathering of a who's who of regional theater and some commercial theater too. That year, things were bubbling. There was talk in the theater community about lack of equity and who's on stage and who's-- Something needed to be done. The director of TCG at the time hired Ken Brecker and his wife to plan this conference. Out of the blue, they thought, "Who's got a lot to say? August Wilson." They asked him to do the speech, and he said no.

He was in Pittsburgh at the time working on Jitney. He thought about it. He said, "You know what? I am going to do the speech." They knew that they were going to get something fiery. They didn't quite know how fiery it would be. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: Here's one of the things he said, "There are and have always been two distinct and parallel traditions in Black art, that is art that is conceived and designed to entertain white society and art that feeds the spirit and celebrates the life of Black American by designing its strategies for survival and prosperity." What happened after he gave this speech?

Patti Hartigan: You mean immediately, the aftermath?

Alison Stewart: Let's talk immediately and the aftermath.

Patti Hartigan: Immediately, it created a buzz. There was applause, but there was also shock. People walked out. I think some people, some of the head honchos of these regional theaters saying, "We've been trying to do something to make things more equitable and we've been doing everything wrong." That was the response. There was also anger. There were also actors who had fought long and hard for non-traditional casting or colorblind casting, and they disagreed with him.

At the conference itself, the whole thing came to a halt and they had meetings outside impromptu. No one cared anymore about the panels on how to make a better box office. They all wanted to talk about the speech which was great. More talk about these issues. It's fabulous.

Alison Stewart: One of the points that he was trying to make, which I thought was very interesting, was the idea that Black culture is culture. That seems very, like, "Duh," in 2023. At this time, what were some of the things that he was writing about that might really be foreign to predominantly white audiences?

Patti Hartigan: That's such an interesting question in retrospect. There was one time at the Huntington Theater, I think they were doing The Piano Lesson, and I was talking to Lloyd Richards and he said that a couple had come on one of the previews, walking out of the theater, they recognized him and they went up to him and they said, "Mr. Richards, thank you for inviting me into a Black family's home. I've never been invited before."

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Patti Hartigan: Yes. I can't tell it with the same gravitas that Lloyd Richards told it. I think maybe that was true for a lot of people. You certainly weren't seeing it on stage. [chuckles] It is funny that you read that now and you think he actually had to say that, but it was "Controversial."

Alison Stewart: Yes, it was controversial. That was what was so interesting about it, that-- There is a very well-known theater critic for The New Republic, Robert Brustein, who also has an incredible resume, which I'll get you to tell us a little bit about, who wrote disparagingly of August Wilson's work. Then, we're going to tread carefully because Mr. Brustein just passed away. We do need to get into what the two men talked about. Just for context, could you explain who Robert Brustein was and his role in theater?

Patti Hartigan: Robert Brustein was in addition to being the drama critic at The New Republic, he was the Dean of the Yale School of Drama. He founded Yale Repertory Theater. He was replaced by Lloyd Richards. Brustein's contract was not renewed by, I think, A. Bartlett Giamatti was the president of Yale at the time. He ran off with his actors and went to Cambridge and had a collaboration with Harvard and founded the American Repertory Theater. The American Repertory Theater during Brustein's era was known for auteur directors doing their interpretations of classics.

It was heady and exciting. It was different. When he left Yale, he made some comments about how Yale was ruining-- The Yale School of Drama was going to be all about undergraduates and the graduate students would-- You wouldn't have another Meryl Streep which was really a stab at Lloyd Richards, who had just been hired to do the job.

Lloyd Richards never said a word publicly. He was very quiet. Then, Robert Brustein wrote, he did not review the first few August Wilson plays on Broadway, but he did review The Piano Lesson.

This was a review-- I think it was in the days before we could email it back to each other, but everybody in the theater world had a copy of this review because it was scathing and he used incendiary language that was insulting and demeaning. That began then when Wilson gave his speech, Brustein fired back in The New Republic, and then it went back and forth. They had answering each other with essays in American Theater Magazine as well. Then, the two of them met at Town Hall in New York for what was billed as the fight of the century. It really wasn't, but I was there.

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Alison Stewart: Oh, okay. I can't wait to get to that. Two things about about Brustein's criticism of The Piano Lesson and of August Wilson. What were his main criticisms, first of all?

Patti Hartigan: Well, he didn't like the play. That the play was kitchen sink propaganda. He also didn't like the way the plays were being produced at regional theaters before going to Broadway. I think he called it make theater that he was an early founder of regional theaters in the country, and he felt that nonprofits should be nonprofit even though his theater, American Repertory Theater, had sent a couple of plays to Broadway.

Alison Stewart: When you say kitchen sink, what does that mean?

Patti Hartigan: Traditional, nothing experimental. Kitchen sink, I mean well-made -- I'm not going to use the language that he used in the review because I don't want to, but just very traditional, very conservative. Story takes place, one set family. That was his criticism. He didn't think he was covering any new ground.

Alison Stewart: Because the language he used would not be acceptable today, that review would not be published today.

Patti Hartigan: I hope not. [laughter] No. You can say just the way he phrased things was just really deliberately goading. I will say that Robert Brustein did a lot of great work at the American Repertory Theater. I have to say that someday. Rest in piece since he did pass and he was an experimental great mind of the theater. He had fights with people.

Alison Stewart: If you can read the New York Times obituary of him, it's very even-handed and it does say that. While he was a great lion of theater, there were many people who had fights with him.

Patti Hartigan: Oh, yes. I'm in the index of one of his books. He didn't like me for a while.

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Alison Stewart: August Wilson said of Brustein's suggestion that people might be producing plays by marginalized groups like filling quotas basically. Wilson said, "Brustein's surprisingly sophomoric assumption that this tremendous outpouring of work by minority artists leads to confusing standards and that funding agencies have started substituting sociological for aesthetic criteria, leaving aside notions like quality and excellence shows him to be the victim of 19th century thinking in the linguistic environment that posits Blacks as unqualified. Quite possibly, this tremendous outpouring of works by minority artists may lead to a raising of standards and a raising of levels of excellence, but Mr. Brustein cannot allow that possibility."

Did these two men really not like each other or was this about two public intellectual sparring?

Patti Hartigan: It became about two public intellectuals sparring. When they had their showdown, which wasn't really much of a showdown at Town Hall, the great Anna Deavere Smith was called in to moderate, but it was seriously being billed like a boxing match. People were taking bets.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Patti Hartigan: It was a star-studded audience. It was a freezing cold night, and neither one of them wanted to do it, but they couldn't say no. According to Brustein, they did make-up and got to be friendly. I certainly didn't get a feeling that August Wilson was holding any major grudge against Brustein near the end, but the questions from the audience were absurd. I think Brustein at the end said something like, "Oh, the thing I've learned about you is that you're a teddy bear." He said it to August Wilson the minute he said he felt like an idiot because it's a stupid line.

Wilson came back and said, "I may be soft-spoken, but I assure you I'm a lion." It was really for show and what Anna Deavere Smith had hoped to do was to have a conversation like the conversation that Margaret Mead had with James Baldwin to really intelligently talk about issues, agreeing to disagree, but really getting a [unintelligible 00:14:38] and it was just billed as the event of the year.

Alison Stewart: In the middle, I'm going to play a little bit of the middle of this. NPR's Fresh Air has audio of the event. Where they did get into it a little bit each presenting their side, and you could hear the audience reacting. We'll take a listen.

Robert Brustein: I think you have probably the best mind of the 17th century. What you're describing as a 17th-century condition, August. You're not describing a 20th-century condition. You speak of most Blacks being locked out of the house. That continues to be true, but it is not as true as it was in the 17th century. He speaks of Black people being brought to this country in chains, and it is the original sin of this nation, which like all original sin, will probably never be expiated, but this country is trying to expiate it.

The fact is that to declare that you have African blood in your veins 300 years after you left Africa.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a little bit of August Wilson's argument.

August Wilson: I find this some of the most outrageous things I've ever heard. [crosstalk]

Speaker 4: Jump in, jump in, jump in, please.

August Wilson: I understand. I'm saying that in the same way that Lorraine Hansberry said that in A Raisin in the Sun.

Robert Brustein: But you are aware that in the 17th century, we were slaves. Blacks in America were slaves. You're aware of that.

August Wilson: Of course. I'm aware.

Alison Stewart: Patti, did anything come of this brouhaha? Did anything change?

Patti Hartigan: [laughs] That's a really interesting question. I have to go back to 1991. I get into this in my afterward in my book. When my colleague Diane Lewis and I wrote a series called The Fine Arts: A World Without Color for The Boston Globe, it was a four-day page, one series with all the Boston institutions, all the national institutions looking at staffs and boards and what's on stage, what's on the walls, who's in the Box Office, et cetera, the art world in this country. At the time in 1991, half of the people said, "How dare you? How dare you take on the fine arts? We have no obligation to do this." Some of the people said, "Oh, thank you for saying this."

You fast forward to 1997 when August Wilson has this speech and the debate in New York. Afterwards, he was interviewed time and again. There was a Charlie Rose interview where Charlie Rose said, "Well, look, you have George Wolf at the public theater. You have Kenny Leon at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta." August Wilson said, "You know what? Nothing has changed just because you have two people leading two theaters. The only people I see at these theaters I go to around the country who are people of color are the janitor staff."

Then fast forward to a pandemic in George Floyd and the aftermath of that, and now all arts institutions, you can go to any website right on their homepage, there's a diversity initiative. I hope they're genuine and I hope there really is change, but August Wilson would've told you on the day he died that he hadn't seen any change.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Patti Hartigan. We're discussing her book August Wilson: A Life. It's our choice for Full Bio. In the last decade of his life, he was writing his final play Radio Golf, which was produced on Broadway after his death. It was-- gosh. He died just months after he was diagnosed with liver cancer, right?

Patti Hartigan: Yes.

Alison Stewart: He was young. He was only 60. From your research, did he have any unfinished business personally or professionally aside from Radio Golf going to Broadway? Were there other things that he wanted to do that he didn't get to do?

Patti Hartigan: Oh, there were so many things. I told you he had that novel that he talked about. I don't know how many pages he had, but he had started writing the novel. He had that comedy. It's funny that he said late in his life that he wouldn't mind writing some screenplays, but he didn't want them to have anything to do with issues of race. He wanted to write comedies. He wanted to lighten up. He had actually taken up painting. When I interviewed him in 2005, it was a few months before he was diagnosed, he said that he had read some article that said that painters live longer than writers. He said I'm taking up paint.

I think he wanted to work in another medium. He had written those 10 plays. Phenomenal output, phenomenal change in the American theater. The legacy is extraordinary, but I think he wanted to kick back a little bit. He said that he would never write the words the end at the end of the play unless he had either an image or a first sentence or a scene or an idea for the next project. He already had so many projects he had been planning.

Alison Stewart: There are so many people that are mentioned in the book that we didn't get a chance to talk to about, Amy Saltz, the director, Todd Kreidler, who worked with him on his one-man play. Is there any person that we haven't mentioned that you think is important when we're thinking about the life of August Wilson?

Patti Hartigan: Oh, yes. You know what? I will say a word about Marion McClinton. I mentioned Claude Purdy, who was August Wilson's friend, but he did not choose him to replace Lloyd Richards, when he split with Lloyd Richards. He tapped Marion McClinton, who was also from St. Paul playwright actor. He had been in the original Jitney, the one-act, production that [unintelligible 00:20:53] did in 1980. Those two were very tight. Yes, he directed the last few plays, and then he got sick and he had to drop out [chuckles] of Gem of the Ocean. It was complicated.

Todd Kreidler was also really, really, really significant in his life. He adopted him as a surrogate son. The two of them were volatile and they would fight with each other, but they did it with love. [chuckles] Todd became his dramaturg. Of course, I did mention Charles Johnson, who he had a really close relationship and felt-- Charles Johnson welcomed him to the city of Seattle. They would go after these late-night dinners that rolled on and on from-- You start with dinner appetizer, and then the next thing it's three o'clock in the morning. Charles Johnson wrote a great essay about it in a collection called Night Hawks.

Alison Stewart: In your author's note, you write, "I first met August Wilson at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in 1987, and the descriptions of the O'Neill are from my direct experience as a fellow in the National Critics Institute and numerous visits to the O'Neill over the years. I also interviewed Wilson many times as a critic and arts reporter for The Boston Globe. I spent several days interviewing him in Seattle in January 2005 for a Boston Globe magazine profile, One man, 10 plays a 100 years.

The wide raging interviews covered his entire life. Many of the quotations in this book are drawn from those interviews, as is the opening scene in Chapter 19. Many of Wilson's intimate letters and early plays and poetry are paraphrased because August Wilson's estate declined authorization of this book. I hope readers will get a sense of his eloquence nonetheless." Did you get a sense of why they declined authorization of the book?

Patti Hartigan: That was a conversation, there were a bunch of lawyers in rooms in New York and agents. I just couldn't agree to-- It didn't work out. I think there was a little more control wanted that a journalist can give.

Alison Stewart: Understood.

Patti Hartigan: That's really all I-- I don't have anything negative to say. I did the best I could with what I had. Does it make it harder? Does it make you work harder? Absolutely. The people in the August Wilson world and in his universe were amazing and fabulous, and the libraries were terrific. A lot of people keep a lot of things you learn when you start [unintelligible 00:23:29] into somebody's life.

Alison Stewart: What is the legacy of August Wilson?

Patti Hartigan: Oh, he changed the American theater. Don't you agree? He opened it up in a way that it should have been opened up before but had not been. He wrote a great play, 10 great plays that also chronicled the Black experience. He changed the theater, but he wrote a record of stories. The characters in his plays are not superheroes. They're regular people who did extraordinary things. I think those two things are the legacy, what he did for the theater, and the work that he left behind.

Alison Stewart: The name of the book is August Wilson: A Life. My guest has been Patti Hartigan. Patti, thank you for giving us so much time.

Patti Hartigan: Oh, thank you for doing this. This program is terrific and all writers are grateful.

Alison Stewart: The August Wilson Theater here in New York on West 52nd Street was dedicated in 2005, just two weeks after Wilson's death. Thanks again to Patti Hartigan for her time. Full Bio was written by yours truly, our post-production producer was Jordan Lauf, engineer Jason Isaac. Thanks to WNYC archivist Andy Lanset for providing some of the audio you heard this week. You can catch the entire full bio on demand this weekend at our website.

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