Series introduction by John Lahr with individual volumes introduced by Laurence Fishburne, Tony Kushner, Romulus Linney, Marion McClinton, Toni Morrison, Suzan-Lori Parks, Phylicia Rashad, Ishmael Reed, and Frank Rich.

No one except perhaps Eugene O Neill and Tennessee Williams has aimed so high and achieved so much in the American theater. John Lahr, "The New Yorker "

Heroic is not a word one uses often without embarrassment to describe a writer or playwright, but the diligence and ferocity of effort behind the creation of his body of work is really an epic story. . . . For all the...

-The concluding work in one of the most ambitious dramatic projects ever undertaken . . . a play that could well be Mr. Wilson's most provocative.---Ben Brantley, The New York Times

-Radio Golf is a rich, carefully wrought human tapestry that is colorful, playful, thoughtful and compelling.---Ed Kaufman, The Hollywood Reporter

Radio Golf is August Wilson's final play. Set in 1990 Pittsburgh, it is the conclusion of his Century Cycle--Wilson's ten-play chronicle of the African American experience throughout the twentieth century--and is the last play...

Set in a black boardinghouse in Pittsburgh in 1911, this drama by the author of The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars and Fences is an installment in the author's series chronicling black life in each decade of this century. Each denizen of the boardinghouse has a different relationship to a past of slavery as well as to the urban present. They include the proprietors, an eccentric clairvoyant with a penchant for old country voodoo, a young homeboy up from the South and a mysterious stranger who is searching for his wife.

-Gives haunting voice...

Characters: 4 male, 3 female

Exterior Set

The sixth in the author's decade by decade exploration of the black experience in America, two of which have won Pulitzer Prizes, Seven Guitars is part bawdy comedy, part dark elegy and part mystery. In the backyard of a Pittsburgh tenement in 1948, friends gather to mourn for a blues guitarist and singer who died just as his career was on the verge of taking off. The action that follows is a flashback to the busy week leading up to Floyd's sudden and unnatural death.

"Displays a narrative sweep and almost...

Winner 1990 Drama Desk Award, Outstanding New Play

Nominee 1990 Tony Award, Best Play

Nominee 2013 Outer Critics Circle Award, Outstanding Revival of a Play

Nominee 2013 Drama League Award, Outstanding Revival of a Play

It is 1936 and Boy Willie arrives in Pittsburgh from the South in a battered truck loaded with watermelons to sell. He has an opportunity to buy some land down home, but he has to come up with the money right quick. He wants to sell an old piano that has been in his family for generations, but he shares ownership with his...

Characters: 8 male, 1 female

Interior Set

Set in 1970 in the Hill District of Pittsburgh that is served by a makeshift taxi company, Jitney is a beautiful addition to the author's decade by decade cycle of plays about the black American experience in the twentieth century.

"Explosive... Crackles with theatrical energy."-N.Y. Daily News

"Could be described as just a lot of men sitting around talking. But the talk has such varied range and musicality, and it is rendered with such stylish detail, that a complete urban symphony emerges.......

Characters: 8 males (5 black, 3 white) 2 black females

Scenery: Unit set

It's 1927 in a rundown studio in Chicago where Ma Rainey is recording new sides of old favorites. More goes down in the session than music in this riveting portrayal of rage, racism, the self hate and exploitation.

"Searing ... funny, salty, carnal and lyrical.... Wilson has lighted a dramatic fuse that snakes and hisses through several anguished eras of American life. When the fuse reaches its explosive final destination, the audience is impaled by the impact." N.Y. Times.

"Brilliant ......

"Vivid and uplifting... pure poetry... remarkable "--Time

"A symphonic composition with a rich lode of humanity running through it."--Los Angeles Times

"There are always and only two trains running.
There is life and there is death.
Each of us rides them both.
To live life with dignity,
to celebrate and accept responsibility
for your presence in the world
is all that can be...