A lot of people have been to every play. It’s a citywide celebration in a real sense, from Pullman to Evanston. After four weeks, things are starting to blend. But it’s a great opportunity. Five years ago, the Kennedy Center did a festival of all the plays, but I couldn’t spend two months in D.C. Seeing them all at once, you see how they relate to one another. Sterling in Two Trains is in Radio Golf, and Aunt Ester’s house is in several of the plays.
The festival came together surprisingly easily. We wanted to do something special. [Director] Chuck Smith had the idea of the symposium. The Court Theatre has done five of the plays, and Congo Square has done a few. It made sense to work with them. It’s indicative of the way people hold [Wilson’s] work in esteem that everyone said yes. It’s outside the season of most theaters, especially the smaller companies, but everyone said yes right away. The only real problem was space. We didn’t want to make everyone come downtown. So we looked to see where we had relationships with organizations and see if they had some nontraditional spaces. We have a relationship with Pullman from when we did Pullman Porter Blues a couple of years ago. The community doesn’t get a lot of arts support. Fleetwood Jourdain hooked us up with the Evanston Public Library. There was some jockeying [for plays], but not much. Chuck chose Two Trains. Besides loving the play, he felt it had resonance.
Chuck called Constanza Romero, August’s widow, to get her blessing. She’s a really amazing woman. She was really humbled by our commitment.
We’re trying to make sure August’s work gets taught in schools the way kids study Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and Shakespeare. If they don’t get it in school, they’re never going to get it. There’s a difference between studying theater and studying drama. Theater is about the transition from the page to the text. Drama is the text.