Notes on Teaching August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle

I first taught Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle during an intensive 3-week online course during the 2020-21 winter break, during the Time of Covid. The nature of that course was such that I could only reasonably require students to read 6 of Wilson’s 10 plays; I think I required everyone to read 4, and then split the class up into 3 groups and randomly assigned them to read 2 of the remaining 6.  

Now that I’m teaching the same course again in an in-person, semester-long setting, we can spend a week on each of Wilson’s 10 plays, and still have time for orientation, projects, and a final research paper. 

I let the students know that, after first began teaching this course, I was surprised at how relatively few scholarly articles are written on Wilson. You can hardly swing a stick without hitting a whole essay devoted to a specific supporting Shakespeare character. 

I loved telling my students that once they finished reading all 10 of Wilson’s Cycle plays, they will be in elite company, and they’ll be able to draw intellectually and creatively on a store of specialized knowledge in their academic projects.

I do think the world of theater education was quicker to embrace Wilson, though English lit courses do often teach Fences.

Because his plays were financially successful, and because his plays offer so many substantial roles for Black actors, theater educators who are looking for good roles for Black students (not just at HBCUs but any theater program) were aware of each of August Wilson’s works as they appeared on Broadway and as the scripts became available as textbooks for students to purchase.

But English professors who are looking for canonical Black authors already have Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and Octavia Butler and scores and scores of other Black poets and novelists who are already firmly established in the canon.

I’m open to correction, but I think it’s possible to get a good sense of who bell hooks or Zora Neal Hurston is from reading just one novel, since novels typically contain 5 to 10x the words in a play. Reading just one modern play is like reading about two long-ish short stories, so I think the real sense of Wilson as a writer — the thing that English professors care most about, rather than Wilson as a person who writes down ideas that can be brought to life by performers — has been harder for the world of literature to absorb, because you can kinda sort know August Wilson through one or two plays or movies, but that doesn’t really open your eyes to the full artistic accomplishment of his Pittsburgh Cycle.