In conjunction with its current production of August Wilson's Joe Tuner's Come And Gone, directed by Bartlett Sher at the Belasco Theatre, Lincoln Center Theater will host a free symposium titled "August Wilson's Century: From the World of Joe Turner to the Age of Obama" at 7:30pm at the Vivian Beaumont Theater (150 West 65 Street). The discussion will feature New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert, the award winning author John Edgar Wideman and the critically acclaimed playwright Tracey Scott Wilson and will be moderated by noted African-American scholar Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
This symposium, which will explore the literary, political and topical changes in the African American experience from 1911, the year in which
Joe Turner's Come and Gone is set, to the present day. Part of
August Wilson's ten-play Century Cycle which take place predominantly in Pittsburgh and which depict the African American experience in each decade of the twentieth century,
Joe Turner's Come and Gone originally opened on Broadway in 1988, receiving a Tony Award nomination for Best Play and winning that year's New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Set in 1911, it tells the story of Herald Loomis who, after serving seven years hard labor, has journeyed North with his young daughter and arrives at a Pittsburgh boarding house filled with memorable characters who aid him in his search for his inner freedom.
Bob Herbert joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in 1993. His column comments on politics, urban affairs and social trends. Prior to joining The Times, Mr. Herbert was a national correspondent for NBC, reporting regularly on "The Today Show" and "NBC Nightly News;" a founding panelist of WCBS-TV's "Sunday Edition;" and the host of the weekly issues program "Hotline." Mr. Herbert has won numerous awards, including the Meyer Berger Award for coverage of New York City and the American Society of Newspaper Editors award for distinguished newspaper writing. He is the author of Promises Betrayed: Waking Up from the American Dream (Times Books, 2005).
John Edgar Wideman, the widely renowned novelist whose work centers on African American life in Pittsburgh, is the author of more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction, including the award winning Brothers and Keepers, Philadelphia Fire, and God's Gym. He is the recipient of two PEN/Faulkner awards and has been nominated for the National Book Award. He is also the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" and teaches at Brown University.
Playwright Tracey Scott Wilson recently received critical acclaim for her new play "The Good Negro" currently at the Public Theater. She is the winner of the 2001 Helen Merrill Emerging Playwright Award, the 2003 AT&T Onstage Award, the 2004 Whiting Award, the 2004 Kesselring Prize, the 2007 Weissberger Playwriting Award and the 2007 Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship and has earned two Van Lier Fellowships from the New York Theatre Workshop and a residency at Sundance Ucross and Sundance Theatre Lab.
Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of the leading African-American scholars in the United States, is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African-American Research at Harvard University. A frequent contributor to the New Yorker, The New York Times and other national publications, he is the author of several works of literary criticism, including The Signifying Monkey, winner of the 1989 American Book Award, and a memoir Colored People. His most recent book is In Search of Our Roots (Crown, 2009) which expands on interviews he conducted for his critically acclaimed multi-part PBS documentary series African American Lives 1 and 2.
Doors will open at 7 pm for general admission seating.
