By SHARON EBERSON
Playwright August Wilson will be honored posthumously with the 2,799th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Tuesday, January 7, 2025 at 2:30 p.m. EST.
Denzel Washington and the cast and filmmakers of The Piano Lesson movie will attend the event, joining Constanza Romero Wilson, who will accept the honor — in the category of Live Theatre/Live Performance — on behalf of Wilson’s family.
The ceremony, at 1611 Vine Street, in front of The Montalban Theatre, can be streamed live at https://walkoffame.com/.
visit https://walkoffame.com/.
The Piano Lesson is the third play by the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright to be adapted for film by producers Washington, Todd Black and executive producer Romero Wilson. Two previous films, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and the Oscar-nominated Fences, were filmed in Wilson’s hometown of Pittsburgh.
An earlier film version of The Piano Lesson, with a screenplay by Wilson, was filmed in Pittsburgh and aired on CBS on February 5, 1995, as an episode of the Hallmark Hall of Fame.
Washington, who has been announced as a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, continues to bring the plays to screen in partnership with Netflix. His sons, John David Washington and Malcolm Washington, were the star and director, respectively of The Piano Lesson.
“The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce is honored to pay tribute to trail-blazing playwright August Wilson, whose profound storytelling continues to inspire and resonate with audiences around the world,” stated Ana Martinez, producer of the Walk of Fame ceremonies.
Wilson spent his formative years in Pittsburgh, and his life writing about the Black experience in the 20th century, with nine of his 10 plays in the American Century Cycle based in the Hill District. He died at age 60, on Octobeer 2, 2005, and is buried at Greenwood Cemetery in O’Hara Township, near his mother, Daisy.
Wilson is honored in his hometown with his name gracing his landmark childhood home, the August Wilson House, and the August Wilson African American Culture Center. His archives reside at the University of Pittsburgh.
On stage in Pittsburgh, Mark Clayton Southers’ Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company presents an annual play from the Cycle (Two Trains Running, August 9th – 30th 2025), and actor Wali Jamal will reprise his performance of Wilson’s solo show, How I Learned What I Learned, on January 20, 2025, presentd by Prime Stage Theatre at the New Hazlett Theater.
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