Kennedy Center to Stage Entire Cycle By August Wilson

Presenting a boldly comprehensive showcase of the work of one of America's most important playwrights, the Kennedy Center announced yesterday that it will stage all 10 plays in August Wilson's epic cycle exploring the African American experience through the decades of the 20th century.

The month-long event, scheduled for the spring of 2008, will present each of the 10 plays as a staged reading in the center's Terrace Theater, under the artistic leadership of Kenny Leon, the Atlanta-based director who staged the premiere of the last Wilson play that the dramatist was to see on Broadway, "Gem of the Ocean." Leon is also directing "Radio Golf," the final piece in the cycle, which is currently making its way to Broadway. Wilson died in October 2005 at the age of 60.

Kennedy Center officials say that the festival "August Wilson's 20th Century" will be the first to offer all 10 of the plays -- which include two Pulitzer Prize winners and one Tony Award winner -- in one concentrated package. The plays will run in the chronological order in which they are set, beginning with "Gem," set in the early 1900s, and ending with "Radio Golf," which takes place in the 1990s. In between will come such familiar Wilson works as "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," "The Piano Lesson" and "Fences."

"This is the biggest homage to August Wilson that I could imagine," said Kennedy Center President Michael M. Kaiser. "He's one of the most important playwrights of our country, and this is an astounding body of work."

The contemporary theater has contributed few more significant and lyrical writers to modern American culture than Wilson, whose cycle of plays almost exclusively revolves around a precinct of his home town, Pittsburgh. Since his death, leaders in the American theater have been trying to sort out appropriate ways for major presentations of the entire cycle. It took Wilson about 20 years to complete the effort, which sets one play in each of the decades of the century.

Kaiser said that while many details are still to be resolved, the plan is to run each play for three performances in the 500-seat Terrace, and to do so in repertory. That way, audiences will be able to see as many as three of the plays in a single weekend. The format calls for the plays to be produced as staged readings -- meaning that actors cast in the 10 plays' 77 roles would not necessarily have to memorize their parts. Three or four directors will be recruited by Leon to mount the various productions.

However, Kaiser added, the works will not merely be produced with actors reading from music stands. "There will be lighting, sets and costumes," he said. Efforts will also be made to recruit some actors who've become familiar to audiences for their work in Wilson's dramas. Though Kaiser declined to name names, he confirmed that some star performers who originated roles in Wilson plays will be sought for the event.

"It's like the 'Ring' cycle," Kaiser said, comparing the effort to staging Wagner. "Except it's 10 nights instead of four nights."

A key issue for the Kennedy Center was finding a way to compress the schedule so that audiences would be exposed to all of the works over a short time. Themes and characters recur in the plays: A mystical sage more than 300 years old, for example, first turns up in "Gem of the Ocean" and is referred to later, in such plays as the '60s entry, "Two Trains Running."

"It will be amazing to see now how the plays talk to each other," said Leon, speaking from New York, where he had just attended a memorial service for Lloyd Richards, the director most closely associated with Wilson's biggest stage triumphs. Richards directed both the acclaimed Broadway versions of "Fences," with James Earl Jones and Mary Alice, and "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" with Charles S. Dutton.

Leon said he plans to assemble a core ensemble of about 20 actors, and a staff for the project that includes the literary advisers and stage managers who worked with Wilson.

"I will have a team that will have all 10 plays breathe with the same breath," he said. "I'm trying to place August in the center of the work, as if he were here, and have all 10 plays come from him."

He hopes the cycle will create a mosaic in which the individual pieces will amount to something more than an African American story. "What he symbolized -- the simple fact that he was most articulate about -- was that America was for all of us," Leon said. "The plays tell a story of America that is a gift to all Americans."