Filmmaker Sam Pollard's latest documentary for American Masters is August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand. In this interview Pollard speaks about August Wilson's relevance, interviewing actors, surprises and more. "[Wilson] stands head and shoulders with Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller," says ...
WATCH CLIP
In this behind-the-scenes look from August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand, director Sam Pollard interviews James Earl Jones, a Tony Award winner in 1987 for his role in Wilson's "Fences," for which Wilson won the first of two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Jones ...
WATCH CLIP
Music was vital to playwright August Wilson (1945 --2005), who as a teenager honed his writing at the same time he discovered blues musicians like Bessie Smith. Wilson said that when he first heard Smith, "The universe stuttered, and everything fell into place." Learn how ...
After showing highlights from August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand on February 9, 2015, the film's director and producer, Sam Pollard, moderated a panel with actors Phylicia Rashad and Ruben Santiago-Hudson; Constanza Romero, Wilson’s widow and costume designer, and Rich Blint, Ph.D., of ...
WATCH CLIP
In 1990, August Wilson and his wife, costume designer Constanza Romero, moved to Seattle. After his death in 2005, the Seattle Repertory Theatre and the Seattle Center honored the playwright by naming a promenade August Wilson Way, which includes a doorway portal and a quote ...
WATCH CLIP
August Wilson's seminal cycle of 10 plays covers African-American history in the 20th century, with all but one set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, where Wilson grew up. This "Century Cycle" of plays has recurring characters, though the plays were not written in chronological order. "My ...
August Wilson (1945 - 2005) was an award-winning American playwright whose work illuminated the joys and struggles of the African-American experience in the United States during the 20th century. August Wilson's Childhood Wilson’s rise from humble beginnings to Broadway was unlikely. Born Frederick August Kittel ...
This web-extra feature is a Hammer Conversation with Ricky Jay and Art Spiegelman, from the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles on November 17, 2007. Sleight-of-hand magician Ricky Jay and cartoonist Art Spiegelman discussed works from "Extraordinary Exhibitions," featuring over eighty 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century ephemeral ...
WATCH CLIP
While Ricky Jay has long been considered one of the world’s great sleight-of-hand artists, his career is further distinguished by the remarkable variety of his accomplishments as an author, actor, historian and consultant. His one man shows Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants, Ricky Jay: ...
Cartoonist and illustrator Peter Kuper played a pivotal role in the genesis of the film Ricky Jay: Deceptive Practice. Kuper met Ricky Jay after sending him this three-page comic, the result of Kuper's futile effort to get tickets to Jay's sold-out show in New York City. ...
