Running with the Wilson Gang

August Wilson's subject was the African American experience in the 20th century. Especially with his speech, "The Ground on Which I Stand," he was a foremost advocate for an independent black theatre. In practice however, his plays were produced mostly by non-black theatres. He was consciously working within an art form as it developed in Europe. He acknowledged its basis in Aristotle, both to mixed and black audiences.

As a person, he was perfectly at ease with white people, especially at the O'Neill, a temporary community concentrated on creating theatre. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we had a fair amount in common. We both grew up in western Pennsylvania at around the same time, so we had the history, the cultural mileu and the sports of Pittsburgh as a common background. We both had gone to Catholic schools. There were things about him I could immediately identify as characteristic of Pittsburgh and western PA, and Catholic school.

It's possible we even shared some European genes: his father was German, mine was of Polish extraction, but there are Kowinskis in Germany and parts of Poland were either in Germany or largely German for part of their history. So who knows? But August's mother was black, and he grew up as a black person in black neighborhoods. And for all the commonalities, there are meaningful differences. Which play a part in our little adventure.

The O'Neill is centered at an old farm (where Eugene O'Neill played as a boy--and was once chased off by the owner with a shotgun) , close to the beach but driving distance from the nearest town of Waterford, Connecticut. One afternoon, somebody was taking one of the O'Neill's station wagons into town, and several people wanted to hitch a ride to take care of some town business. There were four of us in the car. I recall three: playwright Patricia Cobey, August Wilson and me. Several of us--maybe all four--were in need of cash from a bank cash machine. But in those days, all the machines weren't networked, and we wound up driving around to several banks to find machines that would work for all of us.

It was down to August and me who needed a cash machine, and it was getting close to 4 o'clock, when the banks closed. We finally found one small branch bank that had the right machine, but it was inside the bank. So just a minute before closing the four of us ran in together, and looked frantically around. Everybody in the bank--all the tellers and so on--were staring at us. It suddenly occured to me that we might look like a gang of bank robbers. I saw a nervous August Wilson explaining to a teller who we were and why we were there. I learned later that he'd had exactly the same thought at the same time.

It struck me as very funny, especially when the teller smiled and said, "We know who you are, Mr. Wilson." He looked confused for a moment-- it's required that everyone at the O'Neill wear their name tag every day, but it doesn't take long to get so used to it that you forget it's there. And August hadn't taken his off before we left. So there was little mystery why she knew who he was.

Driving back we compared notes and learned we'd had that same thought--that we were alarming the bank employees by acting like robbers. "The August Wilson Gang!" I said, laughing. But August wasn't laughing. It was not necessarily a laughing matter for a black man to be suspected of intending to rob a bank. Rationally he realized there wasn't much risk, but again, rationality doesn't always pertain when race is involved in America. It was an object lesson in that reality, running with the Wilson Gang that day.