August Wilson

In their new roles as content creators and producers for Netflix, Barack and Michelle Obama have secured the rights to Denzel Washington’s film adaptation of August Wilson’s 1982 play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. That deal was inked after Obama “happened to be in [Netflix CEO Ted] Sarandos’ offices” when Washington came in for a meeting, per Daily Mail. Denzel won’t star in the […]

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Actor Denzel Washington has helped mark the start of renovations at playwright August Wilson’s childhood home in Pittsburgh. The Tribune-Review reports Washington headlined a ceremony at the house Wednesday. The actor led a $5 million fundraising effort to restore it. Renovations are to be completed in 2020, when the August Wilson House […]

  NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Grants totaling $1.1 million will help support important African-American heritage sites including the homes of jazz musician John Coltrane and playwright August Wilson, a Virginia location central to the slave trade and civil rights locations in Birmingham, a preservation group announced Friday. The money from the African-American Cultural Heritage Action […]

Ruben Santiago-Hudson plays the band Director on BET’s new hit series The Quad, the story of life at a Historically Black University and how it effects everyone from the students to the first female President Dr. Eva Fletcher (played by Anika Noni Rose). The Tony award winner talks to the Tom Joyner Morning Show about […]

Denzel Washington opens up about the at conversation Black fathers should be having with their son at the NYC premiere of "Fences."

The blue music of “Fences” sings with a ferocious beauty in Denzel Washington’s long-in-coming adaptation of August Wilson’s masterpiece of African-American survival and sorrow. Transfers from stage to screen often serve up only a pale reflection of the electric, live-wire theater experience. But Washington, in his good sense, has neither strained to make August’s Pulitzer […]

Is Viola Davis on her way to another Oscar?

Denzel Washington and Viola Davis give Oscar-worthy performances in the trailer for 'Fences.'

The late August Wilson and his celebrated crowning achievement, “The Pittsburgh Cycle,” helped earn the playwright a series of awards and launched the careers of several talented actors. This week, the PBS network will air a documentary on the extraordinary life and rise of Wilson from his humble Pittsburgh beginnings. Born Fredrick August Kittell Jr. […]

NEW YORK (AP) — A 17-year-old from Pittsburgh has won the fifth annual August Wilson Monologue Competition, performing a section of the playwright’s “King Hedley II” with powerful skill. Tambi Gxuluwe, who attends West Mifflin Area High School, took the first place trophy Monday night by beating out 14 other students during the finals at […]