Theatreworks presents August Wilson’s, RADIO GOLF. Directed by Harry Elam. A timely show for the conditions in which Obama is pioneering.
October 6th, 2008
Podcast #187
[C.As.H]:
The very first thing I have all guest do on the cool as hell theatre podcast is, I give them 30 seconds to describe what the show is about. The show you are directing for Theatreworks is called Radio Golf by August Wilson. 30 seconds. Go.
[Harry Elam]:
The play is about Harmond Wilks who is running to be the first black mayor of Pittsburg. However something happens along the way when an old man who means something to his past enters into his office and changes everything.
[C.As.H]:
You are a “expert” on the works of august Wilson. Coming from that perspective and having done a lot of research on his plays and what his plays mean to the black audience and the world, what do you think has been the most misunderstood aspect of August Wilson’s work?
[Harry Elam]:
What’s misunderstood is the idea that somehow he has written the whole black experience in these 10 plays. And what we understand is that there more to the black experience so there room for other playwrights there rooms for other artists to speak to the black experience or that he covered in these ten plays. If he lived who knows what more he would have said about the black experience. I think one of the things that is interesting about this play is that this is a play that deals with issue of race and class in ways that none of the other works do. S it’s interesting how he speaks to the black middle class and their relationship to the black masses in Radio Golf…[more in audio]
[C.As.H]:
There is a point of conflict for the ambitious character, Harmond Wilks, as he goes and tries to become the first black mayor and he comes to a point where he faces Aunt ester. And Aunt Ester has significance across multiple August Wilson plays. Can you talk about her a little bit?
[Harry Elam]:
August Wilson said that Aunt Ester is the most important character in his plays. That she is the mother. The way he put it was, all the rest of the characters re her children. And if you think of the word Aunt Ester and say it again, it sounds like ancestor. And she is a great ancestor. She was born when the first slave’s ships came over in 1619. So she’s as old as the African American presence in the United States. So one of the main things in Wilson’s drama is that you’ve gotta connect to that past, to that history, to that ancestor…[more in the audio]
[C.As.H]:
Speaking of past history and capitalism today, does August Wilson have anything specific to say about urban gentrification in this play?
[Harry Elam]:
Oh absolutely. Absolutely. He has a number to things to say in this play that the talks about. They are going to redo “the hill”, the black community of the hill. And what are they putting up there? They say they need their first supermarket and the supermarket they are putting up is a Wholefoods, a Starbucks and a Barnes and Nobles. In terms of affordability it is not potentially where people are going to shop. Right? So he’s not serving the community in that way or he’s putting up apartments where people may not be able to afford to live, the people of the community. So he’s speaking to gentrification and what it does and he also brings up some of the history of Pittsburgh…[more in the audio]
[C.As.H]:
Dr. Elam, you are a highly educated man who is a publish author. You have held multiple distinguished posts, as the audience heard in the introduction. Is there such a thing as educational gentrification as pertains to black people?
[Harry Elam]:
I think that’s a great question. I laugh because I hadn’t heard the phrase before. But what you do hear from kids in Oakland, for example, to say that somehow if you talk a certain way, you talk white, or somehow if you study, you act white. Now when did education become associated with race? When did talking correct English in some ways or English get racialized? Those things in some ways are not in a sense, and shouldn’t be about whiteness. And when you think back to our history and that’s one of the things that I think Wilson tries to deal with…[more in the audio]
[C.As.H]:
Taking a little different route. Having studied August Wilson, researched August Wilson the way that you have and right now producing this play that is very timely to the presidential elections coming up, if you were to advise Barack Obama, based on all the knowledge you have acquired in all this, what would you say to him?
[Harry Elam]:
Wow. That too is a great question. One of the things that I love about Obama is that he doesn’t, in a sense, deny his history, deny the fact that he is black and connected to that. So what Wilson would say and I think he says it in this play, is that you have to be able to serve the community. So he’s gotta find a way to serve the black community…[more in the audio]
PLUS MORE UNIQUE CONTENT in the audio.
SHOW NOTES
Theatreworks: The Website
Playing Oct 3rd - Nov 1st
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