The Man Who Transformed American Theater.

Together, Richards and Wilson came up with an unusual strategy, and in the process helped inaugurate a new and closer relationship between commercial and nonprofit theater in America. But his relationship with Richards was deteriorating in classic patricidal fashion: As Wilson grew comfortable in his prominence, he chafed at Richards's guiding role. That meant helping Wilson find "a through line or a fully realized theme", as Richards put it, to give coherence to the fascinating characters and the often disjointed scenes and speeches that first propelled Wilson into a play. Culture & Critics When August Wilson's The Piano Lesson opened at the Huntington Theatre in Boston in 1988, my mother, her friend Renée, and I sat in the audience, captivated by the struggles of a brother and sister at odds about the fate of a family heirloom, a piano on which their enslaved ancestor had made African carvings. [Extracted from the article]