It is a small cardboard box. One box, holding 10 slim volumes.
That may not seem like much. But that box contains a celebrated Seattle writer’s life’s work, and a century’s worth of anguish, humor, poetry, rage and hope.
“The August Wilson Century Cycle” (Theatre Communications Group, $200) collects the 10 decade-by-decade dramas authored by the late Wilson, which constitute a singular 20th-century panorama of the African-American experience.
The boxed set is pricey but beautifully produced, an essential anthology of an unparalleled theatrical achievement.
And for Constanza Romero, Wilson’s widow, it is also a labor of love.
Over lunch at Capitol Hill’s Coastal Kitchen, near the home she shared with Wilson and still lives in with their daughter, Azula, 10, Romero spoke readily about her marriage to one of the finest modern American playwrights, his ties to Seattle and her new role as guardian of his literary canon.
“I lived long enough with August to feel I knew what he wanted done with his work,” said Romero, a woman with striking pale green eyes and an aura of radiant dignity. “Before he died we touched base on a few things. He understood I had to make decisions that would benefit his body of work, his legacy.”
Wilson’s sole executor, and a professional costume designer and artist, Romero worked closely with TCG editor Terry Nemeth on “The Century Cycle.”
She chose new cover art for the plays (each of which had been published individually earlier) - vivid black-and-white archival photo images of the black America Wilson knew, loved and wrote of. She put a portrait of legendary blues singer Ma Rainey on the cover of Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” A young black child at a keyboard adorns the script of his Pulitzer Prize work, “The Piano Lesson.”
Romero also drafted leading dramatists, critics and actors to write new prefaces for each script. “I asked [playwright] Tony Kushner to do ‘Seven Guitars,’ because it’s his favorite work by August,” Romero noted.
For “The Piano Lesson,” she went to novelist Toni Morrison. And actors Laurence Fishburne and Phylicia Rashad wrote prefaces to Wilson plays they starred in on Broadway - respectively, “Two Trains Running” and “Gem of the Ocean.”
After nursing the writer through his fatal bout with liver cancer, in 2005, Romero immersed herself immediately in Wilson projects: the renaming of Broadway’s Virginia Theatre as the August Wilson Theatre; and memorial events in Seattle, New York and Pittsburgh (where Wilson grew up, and all but one of the “Century Cycle” plays are set).
Most gratifying, she says, was Signature Theatre’s acclaimed 2006-07 revival of three Wilson dramas Off Broadway. “August was very excited about it. I knew what he wanted in terms of casting and other things. And being involved was a gift to me. It helped me with my grieving.”
She’s especially proud of Signature’s new staging of “King Hedley II,” a broodingly poetic, bleak work considered the weakest link in the cycle. “It was August’s attempt to write something with the perspective and scope of Greek tragedy, and Signature found the right way to do it.”
Most critics agreed. Wrote John Heilprin, in the New York Observer, “In many invaluable ways, it reclaims from Broadway an underestimated play.”
Romero and Wilson were in sync artistically from the moment they met in 1987, when Romero, then a grad student at Yale Drama School, designed costumes for “The Piano Lesson” at Yale Repertory Theatre.
Her first impression of the already-famous playwright? “I was amazed at how much time and attention he’d pay to anyone who approached him. I was taken with his genuine interest in people, his humanity.”
Wilson was then married (to his second wife, Judy Oliver) and living in St. Paul, Minn. Romero says their mutual “friendship and admiration” gradually turned into a romance. And in 1990, after he had divorced Oliver, he asked, “How about moving with me to Seattle?”
She assented, they relocated to Capitol Hill, and in 1994 the pair married. “I really am a West Coaster,” says Romero, who grew up in her native Colombia, as well as in California. “I love to visit New York, but I’m happier living here.”
Though often identified with Pittsburgh and the Twin Cities, Romero says Wilson “was a Seattle man, too.” He made good friends here and liked being near Seattle Rep, which ultimately produced the entire “Century Cycle.”
Also, “he could hibernate and work here. He could be a little more anonymous than in New York. He’d sit in cafes and write, and people left him alone.”
In fact, Wilson was easy to spot around town. A short, husky man usually garbed in a suit jacket and hat, he spent hours in his favorite spots - B&O Espresso, The Mecca, Victrola - sipping coffee, smoking, writing in longhand, sometimes chatting with fans.
“Two Trains Running” was the first play Wilson wrote in Seattle - followed by “Seven Guitars,” “King Hedley II,” “Gem of the Ocean” and his finale, “Radio Golf.” (He never saw the latter performed here; it was staged by the Rep in January 2006, just three months after Wilson’s death at age 60.)
At home, Wilson - a high-school dropout - “was a big reader,” according to Romero. “He read voraciously, widely and absorbed everything.” He didn’t attend many movies, nor plays - other than his own. But “he loved going to Ashland [Ore.] to see shows. And he loved opera. We went to Seattle Opera’s Ring Cycle.”
Though he was famously stubborn at times, Wilson was also “great fun to be around. He had his set stories he loved to tell. And he was very thoughtful. He’d go out to do something, and come back with a beautiful art book for me, or a piece of jewelry.”
He spent long stretches away from home, refining his scripts in pre-Broadway runs around the country. When at home he doted on Azula, the younger of his two children. (His older daughter, Sakina Ansari Wilson, 37, is from his first marriage to Brenda Burton.)
“Azula is so much like August,” Romero marveled. “They’re both detail people. They’re both very creative, very individual, and deep thinkers.”
Lately, Romero has also been on the road a lot. Coming up is a stint in Washington, D.C., where in March and April 2008 the Kennedy Center for the Arts will host star-studded readings of the entire “Century Cycle” (see sidebar). And a trip to London is on the horizon, for the London debut of “Radio Golf.”
Her own work as an artist is on the back burner - and may be for quite a while. But Romero has no complaints. “August is my past, my present and my future,” she states simply. “I love his plays. And they will always bring him back to me.”
Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com
“August Wilson’s 20th Century,” a series of staged readings of Wilson’s entire 10-play “Century Cycle,” in order of the decades the plays are set in, will be presented March 4-April 6, 2008, in the Terrace Theater at John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington, D.C. (www.kennedy-center.org or 800-444-1324).
