Alex Dodd
When celebrated American playwright August Wilson first saw Athol Fugards Sizwe Bansi is Dead way back in 1976 at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre he was blown away. I thought This is great. I wonder if I could do something like this, he says. Two Pulitzer prizes later he still cites Fugard as a major influence.
This relationship, as well as the raw nerve that runs through his plays and our divided past, lend a gravity to Wilsons first South African appearances at this years Standard Bank National Arts Festival. Two of the dramatists plays have already been performed on the Main Festival The Piano Lesson in 1996 and Ma Raineys Black Bottom in 1992.
Wilson will be one of the strongest magnets at this years winter school where hell not only be conversing with audiences, but also conducting a more practically inclined master class a must for aspirant wordsmiths.
Wilson left school at the age of 15 when a teacher accused him of plagiarising a paper about Napoleon (no doubt that teacher has eaten several hats since then). He took various odd jobs, but always remained a voracious reader.
Although hed been writing short stories and poems from an early age and, as a member of the Black Consciousness Movement, founded the Black Horizons Theatre in 1968; it wasnt until 1984 that he really came into the spotlight. It was that year that his play Ma Raineys Black Bottom hit Broadway, where it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and was nominated for several Tony Awards. That was followed by the Pulitzer prize- winning drama Fences, Joe Turners Come and Gone and The Piano Lesson, which garnered Wilson a second Pulitzer in 1990.
He envisages his works making up a cycle that will eventually consist of a play for every decade of this century, amounting to a complex history of the black experience in the United States.
His plays are remarkable for the accuracy and poetic quality of their colloquial dialogue, for which Wilson developed an acute ear as a child in Pittsburgh. He is often the subject of controversy in the United States where he has been accused by some of being separatist.
In reaction to the way black artists have been treated in the US, Wilson has reportedly urged the black theatre community to disassociate itself from white, mainstream theatre. Wilson, however, doesnt see himself as a separatist. I dont think Im being too extreme, he says. I believe theres a lot more room to go. With his issues, attitudes and brilliance, he should have the spark required to get local audiences fired up.
Other winter school highlights include Leon van Nierops series On Films and expert on Swedish and Scandanavian film Gunnar Berghdals In Conversation with the Ingmar Bergman and aspects of the spirituality focus.