From the Executive Director

In the Age of Wilson By Ben Cameron

Welcome to the new AMERICAN THEATRE. We hope all of you share our excitement about our new format—the expansion into color (a move which offers us tremendous new visual possibilities, especially in representing the fantastic work of theatre designers), the energetic new layout and type choices reflecting the superb contributions of our consultants Bob Stern and Amanda Voss of Ralph Appelbaum Associates, our own art director Kitty Suen, and even all those TCG National Conference attendees who registered their preferences as we found ourselves torn between two distinctive cover designs. For the new look, here's looking at you, kids, as Bogie would have said.

You may have already noticed a gradual, albeit subtle, evolution in the editorial content of the magazine over past months—and indeed, the visual overhaul has been undertaken not for its own sake, but to recognize this emerging new moment in our work. International coverage now appears on a more consistent basis, whether through stories looking at international organizations or the experiences of Americans abroad, or through regular inclusion of select international performances in our listings. While we continue to capture news of importance not necessarily emphasized by the national mainstream media (Entrances & Exits is a prime example), we're now placing additional emphasis on "big picture" stories—overviews of our field or observations from big thinkers—and on the voices of artists, who offer their work firsthand through play publication, or speak more directly in interviews and essays about their work and their lives. These new directions spring from our desire to serve the members of our professional theatre family more deeply—a family that includes theatre trustees and audiences in addition to those employed by our institutions.

Guidance in these matters has come from our wonderful magazine advisory task force: from the field, Chris Coleman, artistic director of Oregon's Portland Center Stage; Oskar Eustis, artistic director of New York City's Public Theater; David Hawkanson, executive director of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company; Judith Rubin, board chair of New York City's Playwrights Horizons; and designer Susan Tsu of Pittsburgh, Pa.; and from TCG, American Theatre editor Jim O'Quinn, publisher Terry Nemeth and deputy director Joan Channick. Kudos and deepest thanks all around, including to tireless AT staffers Sarah Hart, Randy Gener and Nicole Estvanik.

Not surprisingly, we've been looking forward to this issue for months. With cover-to-cover stories of interest—including Ben Pesner's provocative inquiry into the finances and productivity of U.S. theatres, an extraordinary interview with August Wilson conducted by Suzan-Lori Parks, and the publication premiere of Radio Golf, the long-awaited completion of Mr. Wilson's 20th-century cycle—this is clearly an issue to celebrate.

At least, that was the plan. But in a twist of events more appropriate to Greek tragedy than to life as we tend to know it, a shadow hangs over this issue. Earlier this year, on the heels of the completion of the cycle—surely the most ambitious American dramatic project undertaken in our history—August Wilson disclosed his bout with cancer, an illness of unusual ferocity that would eventually claim his life on Oct. 2. As word began to filter through the field, phones began to ring, e-mails began to fly, heads began to shake in disbelief.

Somehow it doesn't seem possible that we are now entering a time in which we cannot look forward to the next August Wilson play. It seems equally impossible to imagine an American theatre that had not had him in our ranks. I'm sure we all have our own Wilson-inspired memories: My own sense of the power of theatre was irreversibly altered on the night I sat riveted and watched Charles S. Dutton spit in the face of God in Ma Rainey—my first encounter with August's unique poetry and passion, his ability to give voice to deepest grief or incandescent rage, often wedded together. I would see that power again and again, in the unforgettable face-off of father and son in Fences, in the struggle of inheritance in The Piano Lesson, in the cycle of oppression, murder and flight to freedom in Gem of the Ocean. I have never left a performance of a Wilson play without feeling stirred, moved, deeply shaken, newly and anciently human. He has been perhaps our greatest poet, our strictest conscience—as he demonstrated in the historic address "The Ground on Which I Stand" (Sept. '96), a gauntlet hurled with courage and defiance—and our most enthralling activist in his creation of the African Grove Institute for the Arts.

My last glimpse of August came at the TCG Conference in Seattle this past June, where he generously appeared for a book signing—an appearance made in spite of his recent medical diagnosis, of which few were aware at that moment. I remember the way he signed every book, looked into every eye, listened to everything that was said to him. I remember the line of young artists that filled that lobby, the nervousness on their faces knowing themselves to be in the presence of greatness. "I am in the theatre because of you," more than one was heard to say.

This—more than any new design—is what we truly celebrate in this issue. We have lived in the time of August Wilson, and the writers who will follow the path he has forged are testaments to his greatness. His is a combined legacy of master and disciples that will animate the theatre and stir the human heart for decades to come.