People’s Light and Theatre Company Presents August Wilson’s Iconic Play Seven Guitars

When playwright August Wilson died in 2005, The New York Times writer Ben Brantley compared his writing to "the sweep of Shakespearean music," his plays "like grand opera rooted in the blues." Wilson won a host of awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes;  his magnum opus, now known as the Pittsburgh cycle, includes 10 plays, each set in a different decade of the 20th century, chronicling the lives of ordinary African Americans.

As People’s Light and Theatre stages Seven Guitars, one of these so-called "decade plays," WRTI’s Susan Lewis looks at the musical prose of August Wilson.