Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.

Playwright August Wilson has been called the theater's poet of Black America.

His ambitious and complicated life is detailed in a new biography by Patti Hartigan titled August Wilson: A Life.

Hartigan describes Wilson's struggles to define himself as a writer and the joys and cost to his personal life of producing his Pulitzer Prize winning plays.

I'm April Lidinsky, filling in this week for Gail Martin.

And joining me today is Aaron Nichols, executive director of the South Bend Civic Theater.

Welcome, Aaron.

I'm so looking forward to talking about this book with you.

Thank you so much.

April, it's a pleasure to be here.

So give us the big picture.

Who was August Wilson?

And then we'll talk about what we're making in his honor.

Sure.

Sure.

Well, August Wilson, as you said, is a preeminent playwright in the United States, a legend and really accomplished something that has never been done before or after, which is this incredible dect..., like ten play series of plays about the African-American experience.

So I've heard it really compared to Shakespeare in its scale, because it is ten plays, starting with Gem of the Ocean, which the Civic did a few years ago, and all the way through Radio Golf, which includes ten plays each detailing a different decade.

Some of the plays that are in there are Fences, which is one that Denzel Washington just produced with Viola Davis.

And we just saw Ma Rainey, which just came out again with Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman, his final film.

So these plays and this playwright really do give a a glimpse into the African-American experience through an entire century.

Yeah.

So that is really why the Civic decided to do this series of plays.

And so you can keep coming to the Civic to see more and more about August.

But now we can hear about his life through what we do with our meal and our dinner and about all.

Right here, what a great launch and so much ambition.

He starts with pretty humble roots in Pittsburgh.

So let's talk a little bit about what we're making today, the food that honors Pittsburgh.

And it was very fun to think up this this project.

And so we're going to be collaborating just as August Wilson's writing process, which we'll talk about, was very collaborative.

So on this side over here, I'm going to be showing how to make pierogis.

These are going to be stuffed with a filling that's potato and cheese and lots of sauteed onions, and I'll be showing how to roll them out and pinch them, which is a lot of fun.

And what are you doing over here to get our sizzling pan?

Exactly.

Over here, we're going to be doing some sauteed onions, sauteed mushrooms.

So I'm going to be chopping those up, getting them ready, putting them in a cast iron skillet.

And this is the fun part to August Wilson is all about.

Ancestry is all about giving, giving.

I know impact and influence and all of the things that your own history brings you.

He talks about the blood to memory of your history.

There's a really amazing quote in the book that I'm just going to bring out real quick.

And it talks about his mother.

And one of the things that he said was, I happen to think that the content of my mother's life, her myths, her superstitions, her prayers, the contents of her pantry, the smell of her kitchen, the sound, the song that escape from her sometimes parched lips, her thoughtful repose and pregnant laughter are all worthy of art.

And I think that's important to remember that that cooking can be no ennobling, that, you know, it's art.

What we do in the kitchen, even though it's ephemeral, just like theater, the things we make, the things we consume, can all make us better people.

And August knew that his plays reflect that.

And I hope what we do today on the show can show that as well.

And we've got sort of humble food.

Yes, yes.

I will say these pierogi are ethereal.

Just as many of August Wilson's plays are ethereal.

I'll just say a minute here about this, Joe.

There's a lot of different kinds of pierogi dough on the Internet that you can look up.

This is a really simple one with hot water and butter, no egg in it.

It's got a really silky feel to it.

And you can see you don't need anything fancy.

I'm just cutting it with the top of a of a glass here and I'm going to be showing how to see all these three different ways.

So but let's talk a little bit about August Wilson's early life in Pittsburgh.

What was it?

What was his what was he like as a kid?

Well, I mean, he he he grew up, like you said, very humbly in the Hill District, which is an area of Pittsburgh that is known as an incredibly ethnically eclectic place to be.

You know, Polish people, you know, Jews and African-American and just anybody that you could imagine was growing up together, hearing different languages, eating different cuisine.

It was a beautiful place to grow up, but it really was humble beginnings.

And so he spent a lot of his time basically being an incredibly talented young man, but being not necessarily acknowledged for his vast intellect.

He was a voracious reader.

He learned to read between three and four and he just started reading everything.

And eventually his mom, Daisy, said something really beautiful.

She took him to the library and got him a library card very, very early.

And I think that moment woke August Wilson up to the potential of words, the importance of books, and how even though he was in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, he could be anyone.

Go anywhere, do anything.

And that, I think, inspired him to to be to reach his potential.

Right.

What wasn't necessarily acknowledged was how remarkable that potential was.

And I think this is one of the more impactful moments of his young life, is he was at a school for gifted children.

He was he was able to go to this to this school.

And at 14, he was assigned a work about Napoleon.

And he wrote this.

And then it was a 20 page paper.

I think it was probably a four or five page assignment, but it was a 20 page paper about Napoleon.

And the teacher just outright accused him of plagiarism and said, You could not have written this.

And he was.

So crushed him.

Yeah, he was so incensed by that that he quit school.

He just stopped going.

And what he did do is started going to the library every day.

When his his peers were going to school, he went to the library and read and read and read and read.

And that beautiful.

I guess preparation is what made him the kind of mind that we come to know and love and I think it is telling that I think young men of color are often underestimated.

Absolutely.

And I think that his work proves that, his experience proves that.

And he then went to create this incredible contribution to to not just the American, but the global theater canon.

Yeah, yeah.

In sort of in spite of some of his early work.

So he resented those kind of slights throughout his entire life.

You know, something sometimes.

Very acute when you.

Read a book, you kind of find out the dirt about people.

And one of the things that he was known for is really lashing out whenever he felt that there was any kind of slight, whether that be from a waiter or a coat check person or anyone, you know.

And I think that kind of a quick temper.

Yeah, a quick temper.

And I think it's good to remember that our heroes have faults, too.

We all do.

And it makes it even more heroic in some senses.

I think to think that we overcome those personal faults sometimes to create great work.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So I'm going to tell a little pierogi story here while you're getting those nice in and round.

Once you put these together, you simmer them for 4 minutes.

So I've set a little timer and you can eat them unsautéed But I'm going to tell you that is totally worth after.

They're simmered and they're essentially cooked, but you want to finish them in a pan, especially Aaron's going to cut up some mushrooms here and putting that in the butter, they're just going to be absolutely fantastic.

I'm going to show you three different ways to seal pierogies.

This is so fun.

It'd be fun to do with kids and if you've got different kinds of filling, then you can also make a little code for what's inside by how you seal them.

So I'll just do this quickly.

Well, the easiest way what you saw, I sort of put about a tablespoon and a half of filling in there, just dotted a little bit of water on there, and you pinch it closed and then the rest is decorative.

So you can make a little fork design here.

That's one.

The second one is a sort of pinching down.

And if you're used to working with pie dough, this is so forgiving and elastic and absolutely lovely.

So that's really pretty.

And then here's my favorite, a sort of braid where you sort of twist and pinch this way, and then it makes a really pretty scalloped edge here.

So let's talk some more about the the Hill District poets.

He he really started as a poet, not as a place right now.

What was what was that dynamic like?

Well, I.

Think he was as as we all do in our youth.

And this is, you know, in his teens and twenties, he was trying to figure out his who he wanted to be.

yeah.

Let's talk about the man, the myth.

Yeah.

And it is very interesting because I think August Wilson is known as a playwright, as a modern myth maker.

You know, he creates myths out of very humble stories.

And I think that that is what he did to himself, to he said, Who do I want to be?

And he started wearing tweed jackets and little caps and yeah, smoking a pipe.

And this was in the late sixties when, you know, black power and the movements of, you know, the the, the black arts movement and those kind of things were happening.

And that was very, you know, we're wearing dashikis, we're doing our hair with, you know, dreadlocks and all that wonderful thing.

But he kind of set himself as a don, you know, almost like an Oxford Don.

And honestly, his contemporaries were like, what is this?

Who is this guy who is kind of muttering around in coffeehouses, writing this poetry that was more in tune with, you know, Yates and Chaucer.

Yeah.

Than it was with kind of the black arts movement.

So that was an interesting time for him.

And I think he never really abandoned that myth that he had created for himself.

I think that is really well put.

And we're going to learn a little bit more about him and his plays.

We're going to take a break now and you'll see some images of August Wilson's life.

And we'll be right back.

All right.

I'm here with Aaron Nichols of South Bend Civic Theater and really excited to dive into our next our our next dishes here.

But tell me what you're doing.

my God.

my gosh.

Yes.

This is a treat for the senses.

So as you make this at home, I hope you do, because you will be rewarded.

It is just an incredible experience to be around.

So I have been browning these off, searing them in a plate or a pan of mushrooms and onions, simmering those down with butter.

Of course, butter makes everything better, but I am.

I just wanted to say something fun.

I brought our family cast iron here because August Wilson is so much about legacy, about ancestry and, you know, when we're talking about the American century cycle, that was really his goal is to give nobility to the African-American experience because too often I think people are saying poor, you know, poor me, poor, the cultural kind of pity.

And he rejected that wholeheartedly and said the black experience is a beautiful experience.

There is enough in the experience of of Africans brought to America.

And then that experience, that 400 years of legacy to fill the stage for hundreds of years.

So, you know, people were like, why are you writing these stories about black America?

And he's like, Of course I need to be writing these stories.

These stories need to be told.

And that's again, why the Civic Theater is committing to these as well.

We started in 2019 talking about this kind of road through the pandemic and now have will be doing them for the next six, seven years here until we have done all ten of the American century cycle plays.

So it's really exciting.

It has been very well-received by our community.

You know, 100 black men of Greater South Bend, an amazing organization that sup Community Fund, part of the Community Foundation, again, wholeheartedly behind this are it's just been just a joy to do.

And I think August Wilson would would respect and admire what we've tried to do to bring his voices, to bring his his characters to life here on the stage at South Bend.

And such an ambitious project, too, which was really one of the things that he struggled with his whole life, both his ambition and his ability to pull things off.

So before we talk more about that, tell me tell me the story of sausage here.

Well, we got to.

Cooking in a liquid.

Again.

We wanted to kind of have nobility of of of the every food, you know, the blue collar meals of of Polish sausage kind of in an honor to Pittsburgh and an honor to his roots there in Pittsburgh in the Hill district.

So we wanted something really beautiful and simple.

And so right here we have our Polish sausage, and we are doing this in just a beer, you know, just simmering it in beer and butter and butter, of course.

And so just getting those ready.

We're going to be serving that again with the mushrooms and onions.

And just can we say pickle like it's the smells and things that are happening here are just remarkable.

So we'll keep this going and then we'll put these sausages when they're ready in this mix, sear them off in there and add them to what you're doing on this side of the table.

Tell me more about that.

All right.

So elevating what seems to be humble.

So we're going to be making a Pittsburgh salad, which was, you know, look it up.

It really is a thing.

So it's a salad, sort of like a chef's salad that's finished with a little surprise, which we'll save.

But it's used usually ranch dressing.

And so, of course, you can buy ranch dressing.

But I'm going to tell you that making your own ranch dressing is really worth it and not so hard.

This is a mix of sour cream and buttermilk and mayonnaise.

Got a little bit of about a half a lemon in there, fresh lemon juice and then some onion powder and garlic powder and dill weed and celery salt about a table, a teaspoon of each of those.

You'll mix it up and will let those flavors just kind of mingle.

Well, I start putting together the base of the salad.

And Aaron, I see your get.

Our lettuce.

Ready over here.

Basically the hard work of tearing lettuce.

Well, I'll pass some other things along to you.

So let's talk a little bit about some of the careers that August Wilson helped launch.

He really it's it's remarkable how many people were part of.

We have already mentioned Viola Davis, obviously, Denzel Washington.

And I want to talk about that, too, because not only was he in Fences on Broadway on the most recent iteration, but he actually purchased the rights to all ten of the films and is going to be making them all into motion pictures in the next probably decade here.

So I think it's fun.

Like the Civic was a couple of years ahead of Denzel, so we were proud of that.

But at the same time, we have so many different people that you'll definitely recognized.

You know, you want to go down the list.

Angela Bassett.

Angela Good, Yeah.

Okay.

Delroy Lindo.

If you don't know him, it's amazing.

I mean, you just.

James Earl.

Jones.

James Earl Jones.

Elijah James.

Okay, I have to tell, this is kind of a little wicked story, and we want to look at those fries.

Looks like they're getting done in there.

Are they?

Do you think I won't mention what those are going to be for, but I think maybe another minute.

Okay.

But James Earl Jones won the Tony for Fences the first time when he was on Broadway.

And James Earl Jones, this is where you read biographies to get the wicked gossip from it.

James Earl Jones fought with August pretty regularly.

Yes.

And really disagreed with some of his the way that he did things.

I think that's fascinating because he in some ways didn't agree kind of in that nobility argument.

Right.

And another actor or person who has kind of come under scrutiny, rightly so.

Bill Cosby also kind of said some things.

And August was very staunch.

And I think in now, kind of as we look in hindsight, we realize that August was on the right side of these arguments is true.

So that I think the James Earl Jones is probably one of the biggest names that has come out of the Wilson canon.

But also another fun factoid with With Fences is that Eddie Murphy of Beverly Hills Cop fame actually bought the rights with his film company Two Fences, almost now 35 years ago.

Yeah.

And it kind of floundered and kind of sat there undeveloped because August had demanded that we have an African-American director telling this story.

And very committed to that.

Very committed to that, to the point.

Hamstrung him a little bit.

In that, yeah, I'm going to turn the heat down a little on these because they're looking pretty good.

And that was a commitment again that I think the Civic modeled after ours, making sure that we have African-American directors telling this story because not only do you have the story itself, but you have who gets to tell the story and who gets to tell the story is is as important in some times as the story that's being told.

Yeah, absolutely.

So complicated in a theater world.

That still was then during his life and still, would you say, still maybe largely white, that that minority of voices are so and that's something we were.

All hoping his voice, if you will, through, you know, some of the theaters that he worked with.

He works through the regional theater site serving and then taking a show to Broadway.

It was a very collaborative process that had never been done before.

Everyone kind of assumed that that that Broadway was the only place to develop work, and it needed to come kind of fully formed in its first iteration.

But August was a very kind of progressive author, and his shows would start out like for four and a half hours.

Gave me so much stress.

I would ask you to pass your salad bowl around to me and I'll.

Say, Are you are we can come together.

I'm going to Red Onion.

And this was that process.

it was it was horrifying to read about on behalf of the actors who would often.

Absolutely.

Learn their lines.

As an actor, starting as an actor myself, I totally understand how frustrating it would be that weeks before you're going to premiere a work.

After you've memorized.

Short memories, you get an entirely new scene, or a scene would go away.

And that process was was kind of specific to Wilson.

I think they gave him a lot of of of wiggle room in that, and they were very patient with his process and a lot of that.

Lloyd Richards, who was a very, very kind of famous producer, director theater leader, called Wilson the Great Black Hope, because he was looking for that, you know, as an African-American himself.

He wanted to have someone who could tell the stories of the, you know, the proud stories of African-Americans here in this country.

And Wilson showed so much promise that he was given a lot of that freedom to develop his works as he saw fit.

So but that led to a lot of stress and even kind of a breakup of the Lloyd Richards August Wilson collaboration about halfway through the ten plays.

Absolutely.

And we didn't even really talk about his personal life.

But the opportunity to read and ask for.

120 pages that you all about that.

Yeah, but I will say it's it's worthy of of reading.

I learned so much even as a producer of his plays.

I learned so much it giving me the reasons why we should continue doing this great work and you should continue to come see it.

Beautifully, beautifully said.

So we're going to.

take a little break here and set up for the final scene.

and you can see some covers of August Wilson's plays Wilson's biography, A Life by Patty Hartigan.

And we have a Pittsburgh feast here.

So tell us how we finish this Pittsburgh salad.

Of course, this may be counterintuitive, but we are going to put a dollop.

I don't know of French fries on the top.

They are known for its Manning brothers and a bunch of different places for putting French fries on everything.

So there's the finishing touch to our Pittsburgh salad, which of course as a little zest of that beautiful ranch that April has created for us.

And that makes it a Pittsburgh salad.

So along with the Pittsburgh Pierogis and the beer brats, we have a feast.

And let's toast to the feast.

Right?

Here you go.

Thank you so much.

So final thoughts on the impact and legacy of August?

Wilson Sure.

I think it cannot be overstated how important August Wilson is to the American theater canon.

His ten cycle American Century cycle series of plays really did just shake up American theater in the eighties, nineties and OTS.

And really the fact that he accomplished this in a relatively short time, 20 years.

And he finished his final play just months before he passed away to untimely at the age of 61.

So now we have this beautiful legacy.

We have a Broadway theater now named after August Wilson, and now we have this beautiful series of plays that we can perform and that the Civic will be performing over the next few years.

Yeah, very ambitious.

Just like August Wilson's Life.

So there's lots that we didn't get a chance to talk about.

We invite you to take a look at this book, learn more about his private life and the challenges of being a creative artist and I'm really grateful to be here with you.

Aaron I'm going to leave us with a quote I started, as is going to leave us with a quote.

Thank you.

He talks about biography here.

He says, I always hated biography, but I'm just old enough now that it's like, let let's find out what a life can be.

Good.

And if you want to find out about August Wilson's life, please check out his biography and make a Pittsburgh Feast of Your own.

It is delicious.

So thank you so much to Gail Martin for allowing me to co-host to you and to all of you for joining us.

Happy reading.

And we will see you next time on Dinner and a Book.

This WNIT local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Dinner and a Book is supported by the Rex and Alice A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.