August Wilson: Running on Two Tracks : Stage: In ‘Two Trains Running,’ the award-winning playwright keeps contemporary black culture and history alive.
BOSTON — Pulitzer-winning playwright August Wilson speaks softly but carries a big message. In an interview at Ann’s Restaurant, next door to the Boston theater where his play “Two Trains Running†opened recently, Wilson talks quietly but urgently about his work--bringing black history to life on stage.
Our conversation is punctuated by coffee cups bumping the Formica-topped tables, metal chairs scraping the linoleum, and music grinding overhead. August Wilson sits on the edge of his chair; he is at home here, but not completely at ease. We launch into the discussion awkwardly, but with the hope of making ourselves clear to one another. What follows is the meat of the interchange:
Question: There’s a good deal of ‘60s rhythm-and-blues in the play. How does music describe black culture to you?
Answer: Blues is the bedrock of everything I do. All these ideas and attitudes of the characters come out of it. Blues is the best literature that we as blacks have. It’s very articulate.
Q. The media say we’re losing a whole generation of black men to drugs and crime. Do you see that happening?
A. The black man has been under attack in America for 400 years, since the first African set foot on the continent.
Q. But is it worse now than it was, say, even in the ‘60s? What effect has the drug culture had?
A. That’s a word I don’t recognize: drug culture. Where is the drug culture? It’s not part of black culture. There’s a very vital and vibrant part of black culture; it has to do with rap. In the past 10 years there has been an increased assault on black males. Look at Bernhard Goetz, shooting those black kids on the subway, one in the back, because he imagined they was going to rob him. It’s an example of white America’s paranoia. Through all that, the rappers stand up and talk about self-definition and self-determination.
Q. What will complete that self-determination?
A. Economics. The problem with blacks in America is that we have no relation to banking capital. The kids may wake up one day and say, we’re wearing all these Nike shoes; let’s buy the . . . factory. Why can’t they? They don’t have the money. Society has written black kids off, no plans for them, and they’re saying (with rap), “No, you can’t write us off.â€
Q. You’ve remarked on the oral tradition in black culture. Is that why “Two Trains Running†is built around so much conversation?
A. That’s how the values of black culture are passed along. The history is not written down; the mythology is not written down. A lot of things in black dialogue are implied rather than stated straight out.
Q. If young black kids came to “Two Trains,†what would they see on stage?
A. They would see themselves up there. They may not know 1969, but it’s not different than 1989.
Q. A ticket to “Two Trains†costs from $16 to $32. Isn’t that out of the reach of a lot of people? Does that make a difference to you?
A. Some black families have to feed themselves for a week on $38. But it doesn’t make a difference in the way I write. You see, in a couple of years they may be able to walk up the street and see some amateur production in Harlem or Cincinnati or Detroit. It takes awhile, but it’ll trickle down.
Q. Is slavery a topic that comes up in black families?
A. I ran into a black kid in a high school in 1987; he thought that slavery was over in 1960. No, it doesn’t come up, and that’s unfortunate. We need to understand who we are in the world and where we came from.
I think we should celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation. The President of the United States, in 1990, ought to issue a proclamation saying that the American people find slavery morally reprehensible and welcoming (blacks) 100 years later to participate in society. If you did that, the problems between blacks and white would disappear.
Q. Isn’t that too simple?
A. No. (In slave days) blacks were defined as chattel. They had no moral competence. So a slave could kill another slave, but under the law there was no penalty. Black life wasn’t worth as much as white. The President’s declaration would say before everyone, “OK, these people have a moral personality, and we recognize this.â€
Q. Many whites find it easier to support the non-violent civil disobedience of the ‘50s than to understand the black-power movement of the late ‘60s.
A. What were people marching about in the ‘50s? What the so-called black-power was trying to do was alter blacks’ relationship to society and alter the shared expectations of themselves as a community. Since the Emancipation Proclamation, there’s been one question: Are we going to assimilate into society, at the expense of our cultural values, or are we going to continue to maintain our own culture?
In the ‘50s, when laws said blacks could (theoretically) live anywhere they wanted, whole black communities broke down. As long as we were by ourselves, we were culturally a stronger people; we were practicing self-definition. And that’s when American society said, “We’ll open the door and let you guys participate, but only if you deny who you are. You can’t come in here acting African. If you learn white manners, white ways of being, then we’ll let you come in and you can get a job and be whatever you want to be.â€
The vast majority of blacks said, “No, we won’t do that.â€
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