Frederick Kittel, later known as August Wilson, was born in 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Hill District, where The Piano Lesson takes place. He learned to read at the age of four, but this early promise of educational success was dashed when he dropped out of high school, disgusted by the racism in both public and private schools. In 1968 Wilson founded Black Horizons on the Hill, a theater company; he did not begin writing plays until 1978, after moving to St. Paul, Minnesota. Success followed shortly thereafter. His first play to be produced, Black Bar, opened in 1981 in St. Paul. His first play to reach Broadway, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984), won the New York Drama Critics’ award in 1985. At this writing, Wilson has produced eight of the ten plays needed to complete a series. The series represents African-American history of the twentieth century, with each play set in a different decade: Joe Turner’s Dead and Gone (1910s); Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1920s); The Piano Lesson (1930s); Seven Guitars (1940s); Fences (1950s; also in Literature and Its Times); Two Trains Running (1960s); Jitney (1970s); and King Hedley II (1980s).
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