James D. Stern on His August Wilson Doc Giving Voice : Things Really Come Full Circle
Courtesy of Netflix; Endgame Entertainment/Netflix
The co-director of the Netflix doc about both an August Wilson monologue competition and the late playwright himself speaks to The Hollywood Reporter. The thing about making a documentary is you ve gotta be lucky, and anybody who doesn t tell you that is not telling you the whole truth, says
James D. Stern, the co-director, with
Fernando Villena, of the Netflix documentary feature
Giving Voice.
The luckiest aspects of this film, which intersperses footage of six young contestants in an
44th Black Heritage Stamp, Honoring Legendary Playwright August Wilson, Now Available
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WASHINGTON, Jan. 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ The U.S. Postal Service issued the August Wilson Black Heritage stamp today. This Forever stamp was dedicated during a virtual ceremony and is now being sold at Post Office locations nationwide and online at
#AugustWilsonForever and
The August Wilson stamp is being issued as a Forever stamp in panes of 20. The Postal Service is honored to issue the August Wilson Forever stamp, said dedicating official Joshua Colin, vice president, Delivery Operations, U.S. Postal Service. Wilson is hailed as a trailblazer who brought fresh perspectives and previously unheard voices to the stage.
American playwright August Wilson (1945–2005), in New York in 2000
August Wilson had a magnificent ear. His supreme gift as a playwright was for transforming African American vernacular into crystalline poetry onstage. His sense for language was also evident in how he chose to be known. Growing up in the largely Black, poor, and working-class Hill District of Pittsburgh, dreaming of the sort of literary glory enjoyed by his idols Richard Wright and Langston Hughes, the young man must have known that “Frederick Kittel Jr., Great Black Writer” somehow didn’t have the right ring to it. At the age of 20, he rejected being the namesake of his father, a white, German-born, alcoholic baker who was, the playwright would later recall, “a sporadic presence” in his life. “August” was originally his middle name. “Wilson” was the maiden name of his Black mother, Daisy. Put the two together, and you had a moniker exuding steadfast wisdom, a name with gravitas, a name commensur
Gifted writers can create dialog that sounds like the way people really talk. But only the rarest of writers can make those words into poetry. The late August Wilson, whose plays include one for each decade of the 20th century, created stories epic in scope, tragic in circumstance, and yet still somehow hopeful. The characters may not be able to get what they dream of. But there is a sense of triumph in the plays themselves, the fact that the stories are told with such profound respect and compassion.
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After August Wilson died in 2005, his friends and former colleagues established a student competition in his memory, inviting young actors to inhabit his characters and speak their words by presenting monologues. It began at just one school, then expanded nationwide. The documentary Giving Voice follows the 2018 competitors as they talk about discovering their love for theatrical performance and work with coaches and teachers. And then we follow the finalists from acro