Fresh Approaches: Noteworthy New Editions and Reissues

This article originally appeared in SLJ’s Extra Helping. Sign up now!

Joy Fleishhacker -- School Library Journal, 1/14/2008 8:11:00 AM

A Century of African American Life

Theatre Communications Group, an organization mandated to “promote the professional not-for-profit American theatre,” has recently published a 10-volume edition of August Wilson’s "Century Cycle," presented for the first time in its entirety. This sequence of plays, which Wilson began writing in 1979 and completed just before his death in October 2005, begins with Gem of the Ocean, set in 1904, and ends with Radio Golf, which takes place in 1997. 

According to the series introduction, penned by the New Yorker senior drama critic John Lahr, this groundbreaking 10-play cycle—one written “for every roiling decade of the African-American experience in the twentieth century—transforms historical tragedy into imaginative triumph.” In a New York Times article (April 23, 2000) reprinted here as an afterword to King Hedley II, Wilson commented that he chose not to write about historical events, but to “place [black American] culture onstage in all its richness and fullness and to demonstrate its ability to sustain us in all areas of human life and endeavor and through profound moments of our history in which the larger society has thought less of us than we have thought of ourselves.”

Each work is presented in a slim, elegantly designed book adorned with a well-selected, atmospheric, black-and-white cover photo. While Lahr’s enlightening essay appears only in the first volume, individual plays are introduced with thoughtful forewords, some brief and others quite lengthy, written by an author or theater artist with a special connection to that particular work. For example, actor Phylicia Rashad, who was nominated for a Tony for her role as Aunt Ester in the Broadway production of Gem of the Ocean, provides insights about her performance and the play itself. Other contributors include Toni Morrison, playwright Tony Kushner, Laurence Fishburne, and writer and musician Ishmael Reed. Each title begins with the play’s production history and ends with the same thumbnail biography of Wilson.

A unique and significant literary accomplishment, these works will be of great value in high school libraries and young adult collections where they will play a role in theater programs, literature classes, and cultural studies. Go to tcg.org/publications/augustwilson/index.cfm for more information.

PUB INFO

WILSON, August. The August Wilson Century Cycle. Boxed set (10 vols.). ISBN 978-1-55936-307-5. $200.

_____. Gem of the Ocean (1904). Series introduction by John Lahr. Foreword by Phylicia Rashad. ISBN 978-1-55936-281-8.

_____. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1911). Foreword by Romulus Linney. ISBN 978-1-55936-298-6.

_____. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1927). Foreword by Frank Rich. ISBN 978-1-55936-299-3.

_____. The Piano Lesson (1936). Foreword by Toni Morrison. ISBN 978-1-55936-300-6.

_____. Seven Guitars (1948). Foreword by Tony Kushner. ISBN 978-1-55936-301-3.

_____. Fences (1957). Foreword by Samuel G. Freedman. ISBN 978-1-55936-302-0.

_____. Two Trains Running (1969). Foreword by Laurence Fishburne. ISBN 978-1-55936-303-7.

_____. Jitney (1977). Foreword by Ishmael Reed. ISBN 978-1-55936-304-4.

_____. King Hedley II (1985). Foreword by Marion McClinton. ISBN 978-1-55936-305-1.

_____. Radio Golf (1997). Foreword by Suzan-Lori Parks. ISBN 978-1-55936-306-8.

ea vol: Theatre Communications Group. 2007. Tr. $25.00.

Distributed by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution (www.cbsd.com).