Radio Golf Essay Example
Radio Golf Essay Example

Radio Golf Essay Example

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Radio Golf is a dynamic play; a riveting richly textured drama with excellent production and a first rate cast. It speaks of future dreams and aspirations; an experience that would leave the audience spell bonded for long hours after they have left the theatre. It is a delightfully amusing story about today’s world and has some extremely plausible acting by Harry Lennix and Tonya Pinkins, who play the lead pair with assiduous skill and sensitivity, in their Broadway performance.

This play was written by August Wilson, a Pulitzer Prize wining American Playwright as one of the ten plays on the African American experience in the 20th century in US, and was chosen as the best American play, and nominated as the ‘Distinguished Production of a Play. ’ It opened

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on May 8th 2005, on Tuesday at Bond 45. Directed by Kenny Leon this play was a rage with the audience from the opening night itself.

Radio Golf has the story of a successful entrepreneur, who aspires to become the first Black Mayor of the city, but somehow the inevitable past catches up and he finds himself in a difficult situation, much of which turns out to be his own doing. Set in Pittsburgh, this play is bursting with energy and humor, and it is hard not to feel the pull at the heartstrings while watching this remarkable play. The play ends up with an outstanding aria about the way the Blacks are perceived in the American society.

The author August Wilson was born in April 27, 1945 in Pennsylvania and was the fourth of six children of his German baker

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father, and a African American mother. As a child Wilson had encountered many racial hostility, when bricks were thrown through the window of his house. He went through many experiences that perhaps provided the fodder for all his plays on racial prejudices. He married three times. Wilson received many honorary degrees, including an honorary Doctor of Humanities from the University of Pittsburgh where he also served as a member of the University’s Board of Trustees from 1992 to 1995.

His play Radio Golf is perceived as the best in his ten play series on the African American experience. Wilson has proved once again that he is America’s most insightful playwright, when it comes to spinning a dramatic story, with life size characters. His characteristic wisdom and humor is once again proven through this play. Unfortunately it proved to be the last play by August Wilson as he died on October 2, 2005, in the same year when his play was receiving raving reviews. Just 14 days after his death, on October 16, 2005, the Virginia Theater in New York’s Broadway theater district was renamed the August Wilson Theater.

This is the first theatre to bear the name of an African American. His birthday April 27th, is named August Wilson Day by the city of New York and would be celebrated as such this year, on what would have been his 62nd birthday. In Wilson’s own words that he wrote in one of his famous plays, ‘Fences’: “Death ain’t nothing but a fastball on the outside corner. ” (Fences). A Pulitzer prize winner August Wilsonhas proved himself a writer par excellence, that fell victim

to the fast ball of death, and was ousted from the field rather untimely.

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