The Lucy Craft Laney Heritage Theater presented staged readings of Pulitzer Prize winning playwright August Wilson’s plays. August Wilson, known affectionately by the theater community as the "Black Shakespeare", completed an award-winning canon of 10 stage plays looking into the lives of ordinary African-Americans citizens. Each play was set in a particular decade beginning with the 1900’s and ending in the 1990’s. The Heritage Theater presented Seven Guitars (1940’s); Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1910’s); Two Trains Running (1960’s); The Piano Lesson (1930’s); Fences (1950’s); Jitney (1970’s); King Hedley II (1980’s) and Gem of the Ocean (1900’s).

More About August Wilson
Born on April 27, 1945, August Wilson grew up in the Hill district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His childhood experiences in this black slum community would later inspire his dramatic writings, including his first produced play, Black Bart and the Sacred Hills, which was staged in 1981.  Then, in 1984, August Wilson was catapulted to the forefront of the American theatre scene with the success of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, produced at Yale and later in New York in 1984. The play was voted Best Play of the Year (1984-85) by the New York Drama Critics' Circle.

Wilson continued to work in close collaboration with Lloyd Richards of the Yale School of Drama, and by early 1990's, had established himself as the best known and most popular African-American playwright. Wilson also set for himself a daunting task--to write a ten play cycle that chronicles each decade of the black experience in the 20th century. Each of Wilson's plays is a chapter in this remarkable cycle of plays and focuses on what Wilson perceives as the largest issue to confront African-Americans in that decade.

Wilson's other awards include the New York Drama Critics Circle Award (1985, 1987, 1988), the Whiting Foundation Award (1986), the American Theatre Critics Award (1986, 1989, 1991), the Outer Circle Award (1987), the Drama Desk Award (1987), the John Gassner Award (1987), the Tony Award (1987), the Helen Hayer Award (1988), and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1987, 1990).

More About Jerome Bates
Jerome Preston Bates has spent the last twenty years as a working actor in film, television and theater in New York City and across the country. Some of the highlights of his theatrical career include other August Wilson plays such as "Jitney", "Joe Turner’s Come & Gone" in addition to "Two Trains Running." Mr. Bates’ television credits include "NYPD Blue," "All My Children," "One Life to Live" as well as numerous appearances on NBC’s "Third Watch" and "Law & Order." He recently appeared in the remake of the 1970’s classic "Shaft," starring Samuel L Jackson and HBO’s original series "Oz." Mr. Bates is now making a foray into writing with the completion of the stage play Electric Lady, which is centered on the life of famous guitar player, Jimi Hendrix.

Since we last saw Mr. Bates he played the lead role in "Freda Peoples" to sold-out audiences during the National Black Theater Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. On October 17th Mr. Bates participated in a ceremony to rename the Virginia Theater on 52nd Street. The Theater will be known as the August Wilson Theater and will be designed based on the playwright’s signature. He will become the first black to have a Broadway theater named in his honor.