With its vaulted ceiling and marble-lined lobby, Pittsburgh's City-County Building seems an apt place for a Black History Month exhibit honoring playwright August Wilson, one of the city’s most celebrated sons. The photographs, scripts and other memorabilia also constitute the first off-campus glimpse of material from the University of Pittsburgh’s August Wilson Archive.
Pitt’s Hillman Library acquired the archive in 2020, and its public face so far has consisted of a small display on the library’s third floor. That is changing, though, with events to mark the archive’s official grand opening starting later this month.
Meanwhile, visitors to Downtown’s City-County Building can get a glimpse thanks to “Highlights from the August Wilson Archive.”
“This is the first exhibit we’ve had outside the library since we acquired it. It’s very exciting,” said Diael Thomas, the archive’s outreach and engagement coordinator.
The exhibit was curated by Taylor Allderdice High School senior Eliza Gonzalez, who said she was unfamiliar with Wilson and his work before a mentor connected her to the archive regarding the project. She began work in November; her preparations included reading all 10 of Wilson’s Century Cycle of plays exploring Black life in America during the 20th century.
“It’s really been a transformative experience,” said Gonzalez at the exhibit’s grand opening on Monday. Other speakers at the event included Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald; Mayor Ed Gainey’s chief of staff, Jake Wheatley; and Wilson’s nephew Paul Ellis, founder of the Hill District's August Wilson House.
The show includes about 60 items, including material representing all 10 of Wilson’s Century Cycle plays. Nine of the 10 works, including such classics as “Fences” and “The Piano Lesson,” were set in the Hill, where Wilson was born, in 1945, and largely grew up.
Memorable items include a prop guitar from a production of “Seven Guitars” and several ceramic roosters that fans sent to Wilson over the years. (Roosters are a key symbol in the play.)
There’s also part of a draft of Wilson’s early work “Black Bart and the Sacred Hills,” handwritten on the back of a paper diner placemat; a 1980 typescript of another early play, “Malcolm X”; and Wilson’s honorary diploma from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, awarded in 1989 in recognition of the countless hours the young high school dropout spent reading at the library’s main branch, in Oakland.
Gonzalez said she was also intrigued by Wilson’s personal artworks – many of them doodles depicting himself or acquaintances, in ink, pastel and even Microsoft Paint.
“These are all his personal things, so we don’t just get to see the writer, the great American writer of his time,” she said. “We get to see someone in a kind of more intimate setting, and get to see pictures of his family, and him as a person, and I think that was one of the really wonderful things about the exhibit.”
An online component features videotaped interviews with the likes of Sala Udin, the actor, activist and elected official who grew up with Wilson and acted in his early plays; Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company founder Mark Clayton Southers, who knew Wilson and has directed productions of all 10 plays; and Pitt professor and Black history scholar Laurence Glasco.
In all, the archive contains some 450 boxes of material. Events leading to the collection’s March 3 grand opening including Pitt Stages’ new production of “Seven Guitars,” which runs Feb. 17-26, at Oakland’s Charity Randall Theatre.
Gonzalez said she hopes to attend what would be her first production of an August Wilson play.
