Friday, October 06, 2006

um ... wow.

from theatremania: KENNEDY CENTER TO PRESENT AUGUST WILSON'S "PITTSBURGH CYCLE" IN SPRING 2008
By: Michael Portantiere

In Spring 2008, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. will present the late Pulitzer Prize-winner August Wilson's complete "Pittsburgh Cycle" of 10 plays dealing with the African-American experience in the 20th century. Each play will be given three staged readings with costumes, lighting, and scenery in the center's Terrace Theater. Kenny Leon will serve as the month-long festival's artistic director and will direct several of the plays; two other directors will be named at a later date.

Nine out of 10 of the plays are set in Pittsburgh, and the action of each unfolds during a different decade of the 1900s. At the Kennedy Center, the plays will be presented under the umbrella title August Wilson's 20th Century. The 10 works that make up the cycle are Gem of the Ocean, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars, Fences, Two Trains Running, Jitney, King Hedley II, and Radio Golf. Wilson died of liver cancer on October 2, 2005.

Leon was represented on Broadway by Gem of the Ocean and the 2004 revival of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. He also directed a touring production of Radio Golf that is now playing at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston and is expected to reach Broadway in April 2007. Currently, he is directing The Public Theater's production of Daniel Beaty's solo show Emergence-See!, which will begin performances on October 10.

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