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[instrumental music playing]
[August Wilson] We're in the process now of making a choice about our future.
And I think that it would benefit us to see what our past is.
We are who we are today in society
because of things that have happened prior to this moment.
But we live in a culture where we forget what happened two weeks ago.
[girl laughs]
And to know who you are and what you should be doing,
you have to first know what your history is.
[indistinct chatter]
[Kenny Leon] We welcome you here, the 2018 class
of the August Wilson Monologue Competition finalists!
[students clapping and cheering]
[Leon] Who we got? We got Pittsburgh in the house, Pittsburgh in the house.
-Pittsburgh! -Yay!
[Leon] We got Seattle in the house. We got Boston in the house.
[student] Yeah!
How 'bout the ATL? New York City. Portland.
-New Haven. Dallas. Chicago. -[students cheering]
-Los Angeles. Yeah. -[students] Yeah!
We've been doing this now nationally for ten years.
We started this competition the year after Mr. Wilson passed.
We were grieving at the loss of America's greatest writer.
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Debbie Elliott.
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson died today
at a hospital in Seattle. He was 60 years old
and had been suffering from liver cancer.
Wilson was best known for his epic ten-play cycle
that included the dramas Fences and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
The final work in the cycle was Radio Golf,
which premiered just this April.
Wilson's plays chronicled the lives
of African Americans in every decade of the 20th century.
A recurring theme was the lasting impact of slavery
on succeeding generations of Black Americans.
[mellow instrumental music playing]
[Leon] All those ten plays say the same thing.
That America belongs to you.
If your people came here on the bottom of a slave ship,
if you came here seeking religious freedom, political freedom,
whatever reason, America belongs to all of us
with all of its rights and privileges.
This is the way America looks.
And you guys, you're my future.
[Denzel Washington] For young people to be introduced to it through the competition,
that's the most important thing, it's just exposing them
to something they haven't seen before.
They're good stories, you know, they're great plays,
and young, old alike love them when they see them.
And they're familiar.
They feel familiar, especially to African Americans.
[Viola Davis] August was that one writer who saw me
and when I say me, I do mean me, but I also mean people like me.
To me, he's a muse.
[Constanza Romero] For him, to live was to write and to write was to live.
He set out the assignment for himself
of writing one play for each decade of the 20th century.
And they didn't come out sequential.
They came out as the muses spoke to him.
They're plays about people getting along, but somehow history creeps into them.
As you go through them,
you feel you've lived the century in some way.
He was not drawn to writing about big, historical events.
I don't think he was ever gonna put Frederick Douglass on the stage.
He'd put a garbage man who used to be in the Negro Leagues
and a trumpet player who was never gonna get famous.
That is what most of the world is about.
August belongs to everybody. Mother, father, sister, brother...
Everybody that's got a mother, father, sister, brother. This speaks to you.
If you've got a best friend, it speaks to you.
If you've had your heart broken, you've had it broke in every language.
[indistinct chatter]
Use this time to run your monologues.
Now you take a fellow, go out there, grab hold to a woman,
think he got something 'cause she's sweet and soft to the touch.
[brakes screech]
[indistinct chatter]
"These men make all these babies
and run off and leave you to take care of 'em,
talking about they wanna see what's on the other side of the hill."
I want respect.
He don't know that he's fucking with King Hedley II.
[indistinct chatter]
[Leon] You guys can take off your coats, relax a little bit.
You can make as much noise in here
as you need to make before you go in there.
Last year, I sat over here and I lost last year,
-so I'm gonna sit over there. -[student laughs]
[Derrick Sanders] I know it's a lot of kids,
and they all are gonna be really nervous and excited to perform for you.
[vocalizing]
[all] 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.
[woman] We're gonna roll forward again back over.
[exclaims]
Red leather, yellow leather, lavender leather.
No ho-ho-ho!
[all] No ho-ho-ho!
I will not wait for Winnie and Winnie Williams
in Williamsburg and Williamstown.
[all] I will not wait for Winnie...
...and found out the harder you try and hold onto these men...
easier it is for some gal to come and pull 'em away.
Next thing I know, she grown. Talking about she a woman.
Just 'cause you can lay down and open your legs to a man
don't make you a woman, and I tried to tell her that.
You think I fetch for you and wag my tail for you.
The Black man is not a dog.
[indistinct chatter]
[indistinct whispering]
If you grade hard...
stay grading hard.
If you're hardcore and you're just like, "No, no," stay there.
Y'all know what you have to do. You know how to do it.
Why don't you get 'em lined up, and--
-Lined up? Okay. -Yeah.
Follow me.
-[woman speaking indistinctly] -[participants cheering]
[man] Here we go, y'all.
Hi. My name's Freedom Martin
and I'll be doing Bynum Walker from Joe Turner's Come and Gone.
You can't just look at it like that.
You gotta look at the whole thing.
I hang a lot of stuff up,
just like, uh, different paraphernalia, theater-related stuff, Playbills.
I moved from Oklahoma to come to this school,
the Chicago High School for the Arts.
'Cause there weren't a lot of, um, acting opportunities
in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.
We did a production of, uh, Macbeth. And I played Banquo.
And Banquo comes back in, like, his bloody garbs
and that was actually the shirt we used.
I was a six-foot tall Black kid in Oklahoma.
Like, I played basketball.
That was what was expected of me there.
That's the first thing people saw when they saw me.
That is, that's Freedom. He's the Black kid in the class.
Usually, I've been described
like a slang term, what a lot of people call as an Oreo,
being a white man in a Black man's body. Stuff like that.
I found my interest in theater at around seventh grade.
[chuckles] That is my first-ever headshot.
It was for the first show I ever auditioned for, Twelfth Night.
I was a really bit part, I had two lines.
And I had a sword and I was like,
"We arrest you under the name of Count Orsino."
That's when I first got introduced to Shakespeare
and realized that I loved it.
Prior to that, I thought that acting was just camera,
Denzel Washington, Will Smith.
I didn't know that theater itself was something
that you could have a career in.
I love Othello.
A Shakespearean play with a Black protagonist,
and not only that, a Black protagonist with depth.
I remember I'd always get these weird looks.
My coach would always ask me what was wrong with me,
why was I leaving practice to go to rehearsal.
I didn't know why I was so... unhappy.
I had my mom and my dad and my brother
and I had good grades and I was on the basketball team.
I was a starter on the basketball team.
But I couldn't express... There's no way I could do this in my room.
You know what I mean? Like, this is...
[chuckles] This would not be a thing there.
It's a blessing when you can learn to look at a woman and see in maybe
just a few strands of her hair,
the way her cheeks curve.
See in that, everything there is out of life to be gotten.
It's a blessing, when you could learn to look at a woman like that.
-[judge] This last kid right here? -[Sanders] Yeah.
I'm like... How did he know how to do that?
This is what I wanna do.
I know this is drastic, like, this a completely new place,
a completely new state, new city.
New high school.
But this is what I think I have to do.
[chuckling]
[indistinct chatter]
I planted myself inside you, and waited to bloom.
You trying to tell me.
Get on out the way.
[people laughing]
[all speaking simultaneously]
My name is Nia Sarfo, and I will be doing Molly Cunningham
from Joe Turner's Come and Gone.
I don't trust none of these men.
This is my little ladybug.
These are my stuffed animals.
Sharing a room with my mom is cool and all,
but I want my own space, you know?
I would probably decorate the whole thing pink.
I went to elementary school in a predominantly white neighborhood.
And the other kids would come up and touch my hair
and the parents would kinda just stare at me like I was just some
foreign object, I don't know.
I knew I stood out.
Um... But I felt like anything that I did was going to be judged
in this cruel way and I was terribly afraid of that.
This is my closet, and inside of my closet I have this dream board.
Um, and it has, like, all my hopes and goals on there.
But you can't see that. It's VIP.
I became extremely shy, to the point where I would have days at school
where I did not say anything until I got back home.
Theater had always been something that I knew I wanted to try.
Seventh grade was when I did, um, The Jungle Book.
I was Shere Khan.
Please don't ask to see the video. [laughs]
I got into rehearsal and instantly, I fell in love with it.
[Nia's mom] Is it down here?
Did I hide it? I don't think I hid it.
Is it down here?
[Nia chuckling] Oh, she found it.
Theater can really transform, and I mean, really.
I said, she is wild, is she not?
[all] Yes.
Then why am I the jungle god?
Why did the man come for them from the walls of the jungle?
I felt heard, I felt beautiful,
I felt like people were seeing me for the first time.
I became this outgoing, completely different person.
I wasn't afraid to do anything.
They were like, "Nia, we didn't know that you had that in you."
And I was like, "Yeah, neither did I." [chuckles]
And that's why I don't trust nobody but the good Lord above,
and I don't love nobody but my mama.
Thank you.
I came home one day and I was like, this is what I wanna do.
For, like, the rest of my life. This is where I wanna be.
I wanna be on stage, I wanna act.
This is my screen saver. [chuckles]
Like a constant reminder of where I wanna be.
And no matter what, I'm just gonna try and make it.
So we'll see. [chuckles]
Did you do that?
[Nia] I'm having fun.
-I had fun, too. -You had fun? Yours was really good.
It's hard 'cause the lights, they're right in front of you.
Your words, they kinda leave.
You know what you're trying to say, but they leave.
I stopped, and then I started again.
Don't cry. Don't show your weak side. You're strong on the inside.
[indistinct chatter]
[woman] Cody?
Hello. My name's Cody Merridith and I'll be performing King Hedley II.
This nigga done cut me.
He hit me with a razor and I froze.
[music playing over cell phone]
Y'all can't miss Cody. Look. Y'all can't miss Cody's solo right there.
Here.
[Cody snorts]
Oh, my God.
This is what happens when you're bored on a daily basis.
I was born in a housing project.
There was shooting every night.
It was nicknamed the Ickies.
And no one wants to live in a place called Ickies.
I do got my accolades up here.
You can't say nothing about that.
I got my accolades. Documentation of success.
National Honor Society acceptance letter.
What is that, OneGoal acceptance letter.
All A's. That's these. Don't worry about that.
Reports, everything.
My father wasn't there,
and none of my brothers' and sisters' fathers were there.
I'm kinda in that box where people are expecting
the violent, kind of not hard-working, or like,
or working to make money that's illegitimate, and things like that.
I like to understand why, um...
Why I took a different approach to it.
This book cost me $25.
Took all of these practice tests in the back of the book.
Growing up, I had seen my older siblings make certain mistakes,
and I can't go down the same path.
So I told myself, "Okay, I gotta learn from that."
I ain't get away with murder. That time.
But I done got smart.
See, the next one's gonna be self-defense.
The next one ain't gonna cost me nothing.
Thank you.
I don't really have the resources
to kinda push myself and be some type of grade-A actor.
Never once in my life have I done a vocal exercise. Ever.
Red leather, yellow leather. Yellow leather, lavender leather.
And then it's like... It's like, red leather, yellow leather.
Lavender leather... or um... Ugh!
But if somebody is better than you
or somebody has a clear advantage over you,
you make sure that you put yourself in the same playing field.
Yes. There was something interesting, because he was like...
He was focused.
It was focused, but it was...
Very subdued. But in a believable manner.
-He had a believable creepy way. -But believable, yeah. Creepy way.
-[female judge] Mmm-hmm. -It's not the traditional Hedley,
but I was like, "Wait a minute. That's almost scarier."
Which actually works with that energy shift.
-That shift that he made at the end. Yeah. -At the end.
-That's that crazy guy. -Yeah.
-Mmm-hmm. -Yeah.
That was probably the best I performed it.
-So far. -[man] That's good.
He's connected to that character in a way
that you live that if you live in a particular neighborhood in Chicago.
So, uh, this is our first ten here.
Up top, starting right here, the highest here.
That quote there, "Fearless revolutionary optimism,"
that's actually from the Juilliard commencement speech.
An actor named Stephen McKinley Henderson, he gave this amazing speech.
I remember watching it on YouTube and it resonated with me.
He said in order for us young artists to go out and change the world,
we have to have this undying sense of fearless revolutionary optimism.
Typically, we don't touch the ten.
-Yeah. -The top ten, if they made it there,
-those guys are solid. -[female judge] They're solid.
Last year, I got to finals, but I did not win.
And I told myself, I was like,
we're definitely going for the gold next year.
-No, I'm good, I'm good with these. -Yeah.
Good, okay. Let's close these top ten so we can focus on this bottom.
Where's the guy that we just saw?
-[male judge] Is he, was he part of the-- -[Sanders] 153.
[female judge] No, no, he's not, he's under 162.
Yeah, I think that's a little skewed.
I feel like I'm at a disadvantage.
But I'm gonna work. Always gonna work.
Not gonna stop working
until you can acknowledge me as at your level or above.
Does he have a coach? Or did he come as an individual?
No, he had, um, six weeks of classes.
So six classes.
He was that good without any coaching.
Mmm-hmm. Right.
They just taught him how to do a monologue for six weeks.
-That's six days. -[female judge 2] Yep.
I really think this guy has potential.
When I first came to this school, seeing this whole field
I was like, wow. [chuckles]
I grew up in South Central Los Angeles.
A neighborhood like where I grew up,
people don't normally talk about plays
and people don't really get the opportunity to watch plays.
But I was really young and I knew that performing was something for me.
We would always go to these, um, casting agency places
that we would hear on the radio
or all this stuff. And a lot of 'em were scams.
Um, 'cause they wanted to, uh... A lot of 'em wanted money.
That is something we did not have.
The way I grew up, it was all movies and TV
and I wanted to be a TV actor.
I think it was just because of just the norms that I grew up with.
And it was always like, theater, like theater kids.
[indistinct chatter]
I did not like theater.
In eighth grade, I would never have expected
that a year later, I would want to be in a play.
-I've never practiced with the music. -Okay.
-So go with it then. -And-- Okay.
[playing piano]
♪ The most beautiful sound I ever heard ♪
-♪ Mar... Maria ♪ -♪ Maria ♪
♪ Maria, Maria, Maria ♪
Performing here at school, it really opened my eyes.
I realized that it's more about storytelling.
♪ Maria! ♪
♪ Say it loud and there's music playing ♪
♪ Say it soft And it's almost like praying ♪
I had never even learned much about August Wilson.
But I had friends who had done the competition.
And it was amazing.
So, I said I had to do this the next year. I had to.
Working on August Wilson, although I'm not African American
or, um, I'm trying to be, or anything like that,
I felt as though he was writing for all of the people who are not, um,
I guess, constantly seen.
I mean, I'm Mexican. Hispanic.
Going to an arts school, going towards theater
even though they tell you only, what, 7% make it.
I'm still gonna strive to be what I wanna be.
You're given very little chance in life to express yourself.
Life more so is about masking.
You have a lot of, sort of, labels put on you.
And somewhere in there is who you really are.
And if someone does not give you permission to express that,
if someone never gives you permission, then you implode.
[Aaron Guy] I'm from a small town called Cherryville, North Carolina.
The cows have the bigger population than us.
[laughing] It's really, really small.
There's nothing like that good public transportation smell, you know?
Ugh!
My biological dad lived up here in Atlanta.
He was like, "Aaron, there's much more opportunity up here.
You need to come up here and really push yourself."
I come up here, I start joining something called Toastmasters.
It's speaking, you know.
My dad's trying to groom me up to be a politician.
I'm getting ready for it. You know?
Then he says, "Well, the school you're at, they have an acting program.
I think that'd be good for you."
I was like, "I don't know. I got... I like sports."
My shortcut to bypass all this, I throw my book bag through here.
[grunts]
I slide through.
And across the train tracks.
And then I was like, "Okay, I'll try it."
I come into the class, and they're doing yoga.
And I was like, "Whoa, what is this?" You know?
My teacher started explaining to me, like, "You just gotta be free,
get to pretend, be anybody you wanna be."
And I was like, "Oh. Really?"
[all] To sit in solemn silence on the dull dark dock
in the pestilential prison with a lifelong lock.
Ever since then, I've been bit by the bug, as you say.
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
that then I scorned to change my state with kings.
Then they told me the August Wilson competition.
And I said, "Cool, I'm doing it. Let's go."
I found a monologue that I thought that sounded like
the people back home in my town.
I was like, "Oh, yeah, this is me." I performed it for my family,
and they said, "I hate it."
I was like, "What?" I was like, "Why?"
It was like, "Because you're acting."
It really just threw me off.
And I was like, "Okay. So should I change this? What should I do?"
And I went to my teacher, I was like,
"What route should I take right now?"
She was like, "What are you talking about? That's great."
And I was like, "Okay."
My parents, they're gonna...
They're not steering me in the right direction.
So I gotta go with what's true to me.
[panting] This is intense.
I love this craft. I love doing this.
They didn't like that, you know?
[Henderson] Lorraine Hansberry said, "You have to be arrogant enough
to think of yourself as an artist."
Honestly, 'cause it really does take something
to really think that you can do something creative and make a difference.
Whoo! That Houston sun. [laughing]
My mom's my first role model.
Because everything I am is because of her and hers.
Good morning. Thank you so much.
She is a single parent.
And when I was younger,
my sister and I and my older brother, we all went to private school.
It was a great life. She was working in corporate America.
And then she got a tumor.
Um, and she left corporate America because it was,
the doctor said it was a tumor that formed from stress.
Dear Father, we thank you.
We thank you because you allowed us to...
[Callie] And then the 2008 recession hit.
And she had us three.
I mean, like, downsizing to a very small apartment.
Um, I mean, money for laundry,
we were scraping together coins.
And she was never empty. Always full of love.
[piano music playing]
[preacher] You're going through something like I do...
[Callie] I mean, I said, "Mom, I want dance classes,"
and she couldn't afford them. But she took me to church.
And I praise danced. That's where I learned to do a pirouette.
Just always making it happen.
-How you doing? -Doing good.
-Good to see you. -Supermom.
[Callie and man laugh]
[Callie] I attended High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
And so in ninth grade, I started loving the theater
and enjoying being in shows and musicals.
The theater just took me by surprise.
One day, we found out about the competition,
and I came across The Piano Lesson.
And I fell in love with Berniece.
I got enough on my hands with Maretha.
I got enough people to love and take care of.
She's the backbone of that family. Her reminding me of my mom...
Those are qualities that I wanted: to be a very strong woman,
to grow into someone who knows herself as a young lady.
And it was just so enticing, I guess.
[Henderson] It's about you belong in the world.
That's what I think they get from August Wilson's plays.
You fit, you belong,
you have a contribution to make, you're okay.
You know? You're okay.
[teacher speaking indistinctly]
-Good morning. -[teacher] Good morning, Cody.
Uh, do you have any idea why the film crew might be here?
-No. -Come on.
-[Murphy] Good morning. -Good morning.
Come here.
"Congratulations. We are extremely pleased to inform you
that you have qualified to compete in the Chicago finals
of the August Wilson Monologue Competition."
"...this year, extending one hour private coaching for free."
And so we'll email them today.
And then we'll get you a spot,
where you will basically have an hour of private coaching with,
like, to get your monologue squared away before the finals.
[laughs]
-All right. -I'm just ready.
Good. Good, I think that's about the best reaction we could hope for, right?
You're ready. Ready to roll.
-That's crazy. That's crazy. -[laughs]
Hey. It was good. I made it to the Chicago finals.
Congratulations.
[male student] For real?
Uh-huh.
What you think, they filming me 'cause I lost?
[female student laughs]
[Murphy] Around our specific school and area,
it is 99% Black. 96% below the poverty line.
[Cody] Hey, Miss Mascara.
-Hi, Mr. Cody. How are you today? -I'm doing good. I got a cameraman.
[Murphy] We don't have a lot of departments.
We have no drama department, no music, uh, no art.
He's one of only two kids who does not go to an arts academy that made it.
We don't even have a theater program. This is an English class.
We got into the nuts and bolts of the idea
that Cody's monologue is a great reflection of what the 1980s
and Reaganomics and the crack epidemic did in the inner cities.
[Wilson] What I'm trying to do is to create the world of Black America,
and to create an environment and to show it,
that it's capable of offering sustenance
so that when you left your father's house, that you do not go out in the world alone.
That you are fully clothed in manners and a way of life
that is uniquely and particularly and peculiarly yours as a Black American.
[Callie] There was a certain feeling...
like that speech was already in me. Um...
Especially in the way that he used words, the particular words he used.
The flow of the language, the rhythm of the language.
It felt very familiar.
Whoa.
That sounds like the guy down the road at the corner store,
talking all the time.
That sounds like how my stepdad talks, too.
And I was like, "Ah, I gotta do this. This is fun."
[Freedom] Bynum pulled me in. He's got everything figured out.
I would love to step into the shoes
of someone who's got it completely figured out.
[Wilson] I couldn't write dialogue,
and the reason I couldn't write dialogue is
because I didn't see the value in the way Blacks spoke.
I felt you had to change it in order to make it into art.
Uh, and I asked my friend who's a playwright,
"How do you make 'em talk?"
And he said, "You don't, you listen to them."
Well, I thought he was trying to be smart.
And, gradually, after five or six years later, I began to listen,
and I understood then what he meant.
That if you listen, that you can hear,
but first you have to recognize the value in what you're hearing.
[soulful string music playing]
August Wilson is the blues. It's blues music.
So really, the only thing you gotta do is just hear the song.
Shakespeare has more of a...
[vocalizing slow and even beat]
And August Wilson more of a...
[vocalizing syncopated rhythm]
It's the same cadences of speech that you hear at home.
He's talking about us,
he's talking about me. I'm like, "Oh, that's like my aunt up there."
[Davis] Because they identify with it so much,
it's very easy to embody.
Sometimes, you need a physical manifestation of a dream and who you are.
[laughs] Molly is this old school...
You know the song, um...
♪ She's a bad mama jama ♪
That one? That's kinda like Molly's theme song.
Molly is just bad, like... [chuckles]
I remember reading a part about him going to get photos.
And the lady said that he couldn't get his photos
even though he had the receipt.
Him getting angry over that,
and him feeling like the world should just be simple,
just everything they tell you should be... that's true, should be true.
And I feel like I could really relate to him in that regard.
[interviewer] What is the period or the time when you said to yourself,
"I'm now a playwright?"
So, I wrote a play called Jitney,
which I sent to the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center.
It's a national playwrights conference.
And they sent it back.
[interviewer] What was Jitney about?
[Wilson] Jitney is like a gypsy cab and it took place in a gypsy cab station
in Pittsburgh in the '70s, in which we're tearing down
the building that the cab station was housed in.
One of your plays then was accepted.
-Which one was it? -Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
[interviewer] Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. And the O'Neill Playwrights Conference,
that's a summer program of trying out new scripts?
-[Wilson] Yes, it's a-- -It's one of the best known
and it's a place where you have a chance to find out what works and doesn't work.
Absolutely. And there I was. And I thought, well,
you know, "I must be a playwright. Because I'm here with them."
[Preston Whiteway] Here at the O'Neill, these plays were read blindly,
these submissions coming in.
You didn't know the writer. You couldn't make preconceptions about it.
You just had to pick the story that grips you.
Playwriting is such a solitary profession in many ways.
And to be in a place with a cadre of eight, ten, twelve other writers
who know what it is to be bearing that burden,
to be sharing your story with the world, that I think is so valuable.
I know August found it valuable to find his tribe.
August did six plays with us.
We do not allow any reviews because the work is so embryonic.
We wanna protect the writer and the work that way.
But we still absolutely are inviting everyone in the field to see the work.
The lead critic of the New York Times at the time got around our ban of reviews
by writing a glowing piece about a new talent here at the O'Neill.
And August was launched.
-And the Tony Award winner is Fences. -[audience applauding]
This is for my daughter, Sakina. My family.
And all the Troy Maxsons.
[audience applauding]
[woman] His honors include numerous Drama Critics Circle Awards,
a Drama Desk Award, a Tony Award and two Pulitzer Prizes,
which marks him as one of America's most distinguished playwrights.
[Whiteway] He is the titan of American playwriting.
These are plays that will be performed in the same way
that Shakespeare is performed around the world.
You live in my house, you sleep your behind on my bedclothes.
You put my food in your belly, because you are my son.
You are my flesh and blood. Not because I like you.
But it's a blessing when you learn to look at a woman
and see in maybe just a few strands of her hair.
Just 'cause you can lay down and open your legs to a man
don't make you a woman. I tried to tell her that.
She's a baby. She don't know nothing about life.
What she know? Who taught her? I'm trying to figure it out myself.
And the fact that August was writing the characters and stories he was writing
allowed actors to be in those plays, empowering these new voices.
[imperceptible]
[woman speaking indistinctly]
[Whiteway] Then a young, aspiring actor sees
that it's possible for them to be in the theater,
for their story to be valued.
[cheering and applauding]
That was amazing. Oh, my God.
I just wanna say, I took a lot from this play and it inspired me.
Good, good.
August does that.
Make sure you read all of his stuff.
-Yeah, yeah. -You know he wrote ten of them things.
He's the baddest playwright this country's ever seen.
Yeah, nobody else done that. Tennessee didn't do it.
There was never a dull moment, ever, I was just...
-[Perry laughs] -You gotta keep your face glued to it.
-Glad you enjoyed it. -I really enjoyed it.
-You in the competition? -Yeah.
I made it to the finals. Hopefully, I can go to nationals.
-Which monologue? -King Hedley II.
-Oh, nice. -Yeah.
I like that one. That's one I would like to see.
-That's a real wordy play and monologue. -[chuckles]
-Yeah. -You could do it, just live it.
Acting is great, just don't get caught doing it.
-You know? -[chuckles] I like that.
Yeah, you got a monologue, you begin with the end in mind.
Hmm. What do you mean by that? Could you break that down for me?
Yeah, you know what's gonna happen at the end of it,
you know where you're trying to get.
So you begin with that.
The audience can't, 'cause you're bringing them into it,
but you begin with the end in mind.
-So I control the flow of it? -It's how you get to it.
That's perfect. Thank you.
Now I got a new way to look at it. Thank you.
-That make any sense to you? -Of course.
[Davis] Actors walk through life so different,
because we have to be observers.
I always say, you are an observer and a thief,
that you're constantly seeing the minutiae of everything.
The way someone puts their head down if you say a certain word.
And you think, "Ah! Why did they do that?
"Is it something in their past?
Were they traumatized? Do they not like me?"
[Nia] I had to study my mom.
I had to study the Black women that I saw anywhere.
Whether that was on the bus, on the train, walking down the street.
He's just sitting at the bus stop.
But look what he's eating and how he's eating it.
You see how he smiled?
Do you see how he didn't?
I could walk into a Starbucks
and just be amazed by the different people that are in there.
There's someone having an interview on this side,
there's someone talking to their mother, maybe there was bad news.
There's this barista who is hating her job.
I sit back and listen to conversations and how people flow.
You know? And it just makes me think.
You observe the extremes of humanity.
And it's funny because August Wilson did the exact same thing.
He would go to coffee shops and just take notes
and write down what people around him were saying.
I asked him about his process
and he talked about how he would shut the doors
and close the blinds and everything
and the characters would come into the room and tell him what to write.
[Wilson] I sort of started working on my '80s play
and I'm trying to deal with Black America,
these kids in 1984 with these guns.
I started writing a character who has a scar on his face.
And I generally start with a line of dialogue
and the line I started with, uh, he had been in a penitentiary
and he said to me, "Where you get that scar from?"
Not "How you get that scar?" He said, "Where you get that scar from?"
Like he'd go down the street and get one?
Or like, "Where'd you get that scar?"
Maybe he thought it was his and he wanted to have one,
so I kinda laughed
and spit out my razor blade in my hand and hit him across the face with it.
And said, "Now you got one, too."
This nigga done cut me.
He hit me with a razor and I froze.
It's like somebody turned on a bright light
and everything stood still, and I could see him smile.
I got an idea.
I want you to say the monologue nice and loud to me...
right from where you stand.
Pernell made me kill him.
Pernell call me chimp.
I said, "My name is King."
Good, good, good.
So, where does this take you?
-This nigga done cut me. -This nigga done cut me.
So, boom, it happens.
And then, how do you think that goes in his mind. Does it go slow?
Is it like step by step, or is it...
[snapping fingers] Does it go fast?
What's the... What happens to the rhythm?
Kinda like jolts.
-Yes. -A big snap.
Yeah, and then it, and then he... Now, what?
-Now he's on something, right? -Mmm-hmm.
-Good. Let's take that back. -Okay.
No sooner did the words leave my mouth, then I feel something hot on my face.
-[Sanders] Good. -A hot flash.
Then something wet and warm.
-Good. -This nigga done cut me.
-Good. -He hit me with the razor and I froze.
-Yeah. [chuckles] -I said, "That's all right.
That's all right, the king is still here."
[Sanders] Let's pronounce that. Right, to the whole world.
-To the whole world. -I said, "That's all right.
The king is still here."
-You say what? -The king is still here.
[laughs]
Uh, hopefully it'll be me going to New York,
'cause I've never been on a plane before.
Hopefully, this'll be my first, my first chance to get on a plane.
I wanna win this competition badly.
I really wanna show everybody that I really have what it takes.
[Freedom] As dead set I was
on this is what I wanna do and I wanna be here,
it was still a super hard decision to actually go through with.
Because I knew that... [chuckles] my dad and my brother,
they're not gonna be around for the next four years of my life.
Out like that.
-Oh! -[yelps]
Okay, face down. Ready?
[Freedom] Because of that there's this sense of urgency in me.
Whatever's gonna come of this, it needs to come quickly.
There needs to be some justification for me leaving.
Like, I didn't come here for no reason.
[Nia] I really, really, really wanna win.
I wanna be on Broadway. I wanna do so much.
When it comes to anything, really,
if I set my eyes on it, that's what I'm going for.
I want more.
[Aaron] My biological family,
they didn't support my dream of becoming an actor.
They don't see entertaining as a way to succeed.
So I had to leave my biological parents' house.
They put me out.
His wife is the one who pushes him to this extremity.
Sometimes I'm like, all right, I gotta do it because they said I can't.
But I also say my ambition comes because I want to do it.
Because I love it.
-[man] How you feeling? -[Gerardo] Good.
-Where's your head? -I don't know.
[both laugh]
You scared of anything or do you feel pretty good?
Uh...
Everything. I'm scared of everything.
When you're on stage, it's so exhilarating. [chuckles]
I have my fingers crossed. My whole family has their fingers crossed.
Um, to keep going.
[Callie] I want to act. To affect people, inspire others.
And the perspectives that I can pull from
really enrich me as an individual and as an artist.
[Davis] Coming up in abject poverty,
growing up in an environment where we were the only Black family
living in Central Falls and feeling invisible,
growing up in dysfunction,
acting threw me a rope.
It sort of saved me.
It saved me.
[indistinct chatter]
[up-tempo drumbeat playing]
Hey.
It's kinda weird, being alone.
I'll represent my school well, though.
[student] Oh, my goodness.
It's pretty big, man.
[grunting rhythmically]
Remember, it's you who has something to give to them.
It's something to celebrate.
-Day by day... -[all] Day by day...
-...we get better and better... -...we get better and better...
-...till we can't be beat. -...till we can't be beat.
-Won't be beat. -Won't be beat.
-Amen. -Amen.
[all] One, two, three!
August Wilson!
[indistinct chatter]
Lord, I pray that you will just take away any anxiousness
allow us to have fun and enjoy today.
-Amen. -[all] Amen.
[indistinct chatter]
I left you with your mama to keep you safe.
-New York's unique. -[all] New York's unique.
You know you need unique New York.
[all] You know you need unique New York.
[up-tempo drumbeat continues]
[imperceptible]
Let's get it. It's showtime.
Welcome to the 2018 August Wilson Monologue Competition.
Today, we're here to celebrate August Wilson and his work.
These students are interpreting the roles from these plays
in a way that reflects their personable approach to the characters.
You gonna be good. You need a hug?
-Yes. I'm nervous. -You'll be good.
It's not the monologue, it's the people that make me nervous.
Can I just hear a big cheer for the students, all right?
[audience cheering]
Sounds like a lot of fucking people.
And just so you know, two of those three winners
are going to go on to perform on the August Wilson Stage on Broadway...
...at the National August Wilson Monologue Competition in New York City.
[audience cheering]
Everybody ready?
Our 21 finalists of Chicago's 2018 August Wilson Monologue Competition,
please enter.
[audience cheering and applauding]
Our first person is Freedom.
[audience cheering]
Hi. My name is Freedom Martin
and I'll be doing Bynum Walker from Joe Turner's Come and Gone.
You trying to tell me a woman can't be nothing without a man.
But you all right, huh?
You can just walk out of here without me, without a woman,
and you can still be a man.
It's a blessing when you can learn to look at a woman
and see in maybe just a few strands of her hair,
or the way her cheeks curve,
everything there is to be had out of life.
Had nine white men and three white women,
they all said guilty.
They wouldn't look at me.
I told them to look at me, look at that scar.
I ain’t never met no man that meant nobody no good.
[audience laughing]
These men make all these babies.
And then they run off and leave you to take care of 'em.
This gal's fella,
him pulled a knife a foot long on Slow Drag.
Took the doctors four hours,
112 stitches to sew me up.
I say, "That's all right.
The king is still here."
Thank you.
[audience cheering and applauding]
[Sanders] We're gonna ask the audience to please remain seated,
as our judges will go to deliberate.
[male judge] He was great.
[female judge] He was. He really nailed it.
[male judge] He was very clear. Yes, indeed.
[Sanders] This is a program that is trying to get
August Wilson's words in the public school.
They read Shakespeare.
They should be able to read August Wilson in the schools, right?
So let's agree on number one and two first, yeah?
-[audience cheering and applauding] -I wanna provide you
a set of August Wilson's Century Cycle for your school
so other students will have access to this work.
I'm okay with those two as first and second.
Okay.
[audience applauding]
[Sanders] Whoa, whoa...
-You guys ready? -[participants] Yeah!
Our second place winner is going to New York City
and also receiving $250...
-Gerardo Navarro! -[audience cheering and applauding]
And our first place winner...
-Aaron Guy. -[audience cheering and applauding]
The winner of the 2018
Chicago Regional August Wilson Monologue Competition is...
-Nia Sarfo. -[audience cheering and applauding]
That's my baby.
[Callie] I was just amazed.
I hope they didn't make a mistake. [chuckles]
I hope that was really my name on the paper.
It wasn't an accident.
[Aaron] My family never expected me to win a competition.
I was like, "Well, you know, I won."
You know? So like, "Can you say I'm an actor now?"
Like, "What can you say about it now?"
And their responses was, "Well, this could have been a fluke."
They said, "You got lucky."
That's... They just drilled into me.
And I was like, "Okay. I got lucky."
[indistinct chatter]
[Freedom] Nia 100% deserved it with that monologue.
But it's still never not hard.
Every time I do the August Wilson competition,
I learn so much more about myself.
I always felt like my experience as a Black man
was always different than, um, other Black men's experiences.
August Wilson, I think, was basically saying that
these are Black people, regardless of what they've been through,
which was just life-changing. Um...
Yeah, for the first time, I felt comfortable in my own skin.
Just felt comfortable...
[chuckles] Yeah, just felt comfortable.
[woman] Freedom, next year?
That's the plan.
[indistinct chatter]
[Cody] Everybody said I did good, but it's like, I coulda did better.
There was a lot of talent in that room. I could see that in the end.
It was fine-tuned. It was...
You could see the work that they had put in.
And the talent. Both.
So it's not like it's just a room for raw talent.
Uh, I heard a lot of times, "raw talent" being said about me.
But, you know, it's raw. So...
Nobody wants uncooked food.
It's all in how you react to failure.
Because you can fail and you can give up,
or you can fail and keep just driving in that lane
or keep working towards it.
Lot of people around me took the wrong road.
Specifically, my brother.
I lost my brother in October.
It was due to just the violence that people expect from us.
I respect August Wilson for highlighting that aspect of African American life.
Because sometimes, it's hard.
Sometimes, things in life don't go the way you think they are,
and some things aren't the way they seem.
And I'm happy that he portrayed a Black man trying to find
his own identity within what he was given.
So I'm very happy, very grateful for that.
-[indistinct chatter] -[music playing faintly]
[Gerardo] So today is my 17th birthday party.
My dad built a little stage in the back,
so we're gonna have little singing performances
and some monologues.
This is my bed.
And these are my other two brothers' beds.
I'm waiting to get my own room. [laughs]
I don't think that'll happen soon though.
New York stuff. Here's my suitcase. I have it.
So this was in the closet of my grandmother's house.
Um, it was my grandfather's, who passed away a couple years ago.
He was very dear to us.
This is what he looked like.
-Happy birthday. -Gracias.
Oh. Gracias.
[Gerardo laughs]
[in Spanish] This is from your Uncle Poncho.
[Gerardo laughs]
You're still missing mine.
[in English] I have a King Hedley pin...
that I wanna make sure that I wear on stage.
All the regional finalists took a photo together
and they ended up putting it on a pin.
So I thought it would be awesome to sort of...
have in these pockets right here,
have King Hedley,
as well as the rest of the regional finalists.
So I can bring all of them on the stage with me
'cause they've inspired me a lot.
And as well, bring my grandfather who really...
is part of the reason I am who I am.
So that is going in this suitcase.
He would have been very proud that I would be going to New York.
[horns honking]
[woman] Whoo! We made it.
Coming this far, I was like... "Whoa. This is ridiculous."
To actually see it in person.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God. I'm gonna pass out. [laughs]
-[Nia] Hi. -[valet] How you doing?
-Do you need some help there, my friends? -Thank you.
[whispers] He has such a New York accent. It's so cool.
If you're outside your room after curfew, you won't be allowed to compete.
-[Aaron] And we don't want that. -We don't want that.
Is it too early to ask what monologues you got going on?
-I'm doing Rena from Jitney. -Okay.
I'm doing Boy Willie from The Piano Lesson.
Okay. I'm doing Cutler from Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
[woman] We're gonna see Once On This Island tonight.
Do a little... Say hi to Hailey Kilgore,
who was an August Wilson Monologue competitor.
She didn't win. She was just in it. So there you go.
I'm excited for the Broadway shows. I'm excited to see the shows.
I wanna see Children of a Lesser God.
Yeah, me, too. I'm sorry, I'm touchy.
-But yes. Me, too. -You're good. I'm a hugger.
Me, too.
[Callie whispers] I can't stop.
-I'm a hugger. -I love hugs.
[indistinct chatter]
[student] I just wanted to say thank you to you
and everybody else behind, um, making this competition,
because as I was saying to my coaches,
I never thought somebody like me from the projects in South Boston
would ever have the opportunity to perform on a Broadway stage.
So thank you.
[Leon] Oh, thank you.
Just dig in to who you are.
I am a country boy from Tallahassee, Florida,
that's who I am.
And the more I keep digging into that and owning that and embracing that,
I'm gonna live out my destiny.
You gotta say, "Hey, I'm from Seattle, that's where I'm from.
I'm doing my thing."
Be who you are. And that is enough.
When I look at you, I wanna cry.
I wanna cry because when I tell you that we started this
and it was just one school, and we did it because we were losing our friend.
He had five months to live and he passed away.
And he gave everything that he had, as a man and an artist, to America.
That's what this whole project is about. And I'm just glad you're here.
So take time to get to know people. Don't just hang out with your own group.
Just enjoy this time, enjoy meeting each other,
enjoy asking questions of each other.
Talk about August Wilson. Talk about life.
Let's have fun!
[all cheering]
Especially being from Chicago, shopping in New York seems so elegant.
[indistinct chatter]
She is more famous, but Kourtney's better.
Actually, to be honest, Khloé...
Khloé was my favorite.
-It was so good. -So good.
[all] Hi.
Do you guys have any questions? This feels formal. I'm not formal at all.
[student] Which monologue did you do when you did it?
I did the competition twice.
I did it one regionally, and the second time, I went forward.
I did Ma Rainey from Ma Rainey's Black Bottom my first time.
And then I was Rose from Fences the second time.
-How old are you? -I'm 19.
-Oh! -Whoo!
What's the best piece of advice you can impart on young fellow actors?
[Kilgore] Always be you. Just do you.
'Cause you can't be anybody else. You know?
For y'all to have made it this far after working this freaking hard
is amazing.
Have so much fun. Break legs, you guys.
[indistinct chatter]
What are you doing?
-King Hedley. -King Hedley?
-That character's also very hard. -Yes.
[singing indistinctly]
[Viertel] Hi, everybody.
First step, you've made it into a Broadway theater.
Here you are.
August had one play in this theater, which was King Hedley II.
And when he became ill,
we went to work not only trying to figure out
the best way to rename the theater,
which ended up being August's signature in neon out front
but also how to use the theater in a way that would honor his legacy.
And that led to the creation of this room that you're sitting in now,
which pays tribute to all ten of the plays.
You can walk around and see various pieces of memorabilia from those productions.
[indistinct chatter]
-That's Whoopi Goldberg? -Yeah, that's Whoopi.
[Viertel] The kids who participate in this
are sort of startled, many of them, to find that this voice exists.
They didn't know
that someone was writing in a voice that they recognize
about things that are important to them.
And for a lot of them, it's history.
The current world of a 17-year-old
is not the world of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
or Joe Turner's Come and Gone.
But the issues in it are very current.
[Romero] August speaks about mass incarceration
of Black men and Black women, police brutality,
everyday people negotiating every part of their existence
because of the grander structures of racism.
If this play was written a while ago and this is still happening,
we need to do something about it.
[Callie] He captures what it's like to be a woman.
Being pushed aside,
belittled, hushed, disrespected, has been common throughout time.
[Nia] The life of a Black female,
you have to fight just to be seen and be acknowledged.
It definitely makes you work harder.
It's like the more things change, the more things stay the same.
[Henderson] Any playwright that writes a play
for each decade of the 20th century
wants you to know something about history as well as about art.
And if they can find a voice
in the teens, in the '30s, in the '20s, in the '40s,
that speaks to them,
and it gives them some sort of an understanding
of the universal and timeless nature of the human spirit.
If you can understand where you came from,
you got a better chance to get on where you're bound.
[imperceptible]
[Wilson] It's the resiliency of the human spirit
despite all of the problems that are attendant to being Black in America.
The ability to sing that song, that spiritual song,
the ability to absorb and not be broken.
[interviewer] How do people find their song?
Well, I think, one, they have it.
They just have to realize that, then they have to learn how to sing it.
[playing saxophone]
-Hi. -Hey.
-Hi. -[Nia chuckles]
It's not hitting me that the competition is tonight.
So should I not say "now"?
-No. -Okay.
Be word perfect.
-Gotcha. -Okay.
You said, "These men, harder you try to hold to them."
-Mmm. Okay. -Not "these men." "Them."
[woman] You can still give me the same thing
that you're trying to convey to the audience
without breaking up the rhythm of the sentence.
-Are you clear on that? -Yes.
[indistinct chatter]
You performing on Broadway.
[all cheer and laugh]
[intense drumbeat playing]
[indistinct chatter]
We wanna welcome you to the 10th annual
National August Wilson Monologue Competition.
-Ten years. Ten years. -[audience cheering and applauding]
[woman] This is where the line pauses
and you guys just hang out in the line until we're ready to go.
We have been incredibly proud to be part of this experience
at the August Wilson Theater on Broadway.
-[audience cheers and applauds] -[chuckles]
The young people today are judged on characterization,
focus, energy, understanding of the text and accuracy of the text.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the 2018 class
of the August Wilson Monologue Competition finalists!
-Here they are! -[audience cheering and applauding]
Here we go.
[announcer] All right.
Our first Wilsonian soldier coming to the stage, Callie Holley.
-[woman] That's my girl! -[audience applauding]
Avery, I ain't ready to get married right now.
I ain't said nothing about closing up.
I got a lot of woman left in me.
I got enough on my hands with Maretha.
I got enough people to love and take care of.
You trying to tell me a woman can't be nothing without a man.
But you all right, huh?
You can just walk out of here without me, without a woman,
and you can still be a man. [scoffs]
That's all right.
Ain't nobody gonna ask you, "Avery, who you got to love you?"
That's all right for you.
But everybody's gonna be worried about Berniece.
"How Berniece gonna take care of herself?"
"How she gonna raise that child without a man?"
Wonder, "What's she do with herself?"
"How she gonna live like that?"
Everybody got all kinds of questions for Berniece.
Everybody always telling me
that I can't be a woman unless I got a man.
[scoffs]
I kept seeing your face at your mother's funeral.
How you stood there and never said a word, stood there with a scowl on your face.
And now you're gonna come in here and ridicule me
'cause I didn't knock Mr. Rand on his ass.
You wanna know why?
I'll tell you why.
Because I had your Black ass crying to be fed.
Walter Kelly got his hand all the way up under my dress
and he touched me there. I told him to stop. He just laughed.
We was drinking from a pint bottle.
I took the bottle and I broke it on the car handle.
I cut my hand pretty bad, but I put the glass up to his throat.
I told him I wanted him to taste my blood
'cause if he didn't move his hand from under my dress,
I was gonna taste his.
They had this guy this one time
in a little town called Bolingbroke, about 100 miles outside of Macon.
We was playing for this dance,
and they was giving $20 to the best slow draggers.
Slow Drag looked over the competition, got down off the bandstand,
grab hold of one of them gals and stuck to her
-like a fly to jelly, like wood to glue. -[audience laughs and applauds]
Man had that gal whooping and hollering so,
everybody stopped to watch.
This fella come in,
this gal's fella,
and pulled a knife a foot long on Slow Drag.
Remember that, Slow Drag?
[laughs]
Folks was clearing out.
Ducking and hiding under the tables, figuring there's gonna be a fight.
Slow Drag just looked over the gal's shoulder
at the man and said,
"Mister, if you'd quit hollering and wait a minute,
you'll see I'm doing you a favor."
"I'm helping this gal win $10 so she can buy you a gold watch."
He been my manager for six years, talking 'bout sticking together.
The only time he had me in this house was to sing for some of his friends.
Now if you colored, and you can make them some money,
then you all right with them.
Otherwise, you just a dog in the alley.
I ain't gonna raise no kid to have somebody shoot him.
To have his friends shoot him.
To have the police shoot him.
Why I wanna bring another life into this world that don't respect life?
I ain't sorry for nothing I'd done, and ain't gonna be sorry.
I'm gonna see to that 'cause I'm gonna do the right thing.
Always.
It ain't in me to do nothing else.
Now we might disagree about what that is, but I know what is right for me.
As long as I draw a breath in my body,
I'm gonna do the right thing for me. What I gotta be sorry for?
People say, "Ain't you sorry you killed Pernell?"
I ain't sorry I killed Pernell.
The nigga deserved to die. He cut my face.
I told the judge, "Not guilty."
They thought I was joking.
I say, "The motherfucker cut me.
How can I be wrong for killing him? That's common sense."
[audience laughs]
I don't care what the law say.
The law don't understand this. It must not.
They wanna take and lock me up. Where's the understanding?
If a burglar break into a white man's house to steal his TV,
and the white man shoot him, they don't say he wrong.
The law understand that.
They pat him on the back and tell him to go on home.
You see what I'm saying?
The jury come back and say guilty.
They ask them one by one. They all say guilty.
Had nine white men, and three white women. They all said guilty.
They wouldn't look at me.
I told them to look at me, look at that scar.
I got closer to where they could see my scar.
The judge like to had a fit.
They had six deputies come at me from all sides,
said I tried to attack the jury.
I was just trying to get closer so they could see my face.
They tried to run out that door.
[panting]
They took and put me in solitary confinement,
said I was unruly.
I don't trust none of these men.
[audience laughs]
Jack or nobody else.
These men liable to do anything.
They wait,
just until they can get one woman tied and locked up with 'em,
and then they look around to see if they can get another one.
Molly don't pay 'em no mind.
One's just as good as the other, if you ask me.
I ain't never met no man that meant nobody no good.
These men make all these babies.
And then they run off and leave you to take care of 'em.
Talkin' 'bout they wanna see what's on the other side of the hill.
I make sure I don't get no babies. [scoffs]
My mama taught me how to do that.
[audience laughs]
Molly Cunningham ain't gonna be tied down with no babies.
Had me a man one time who I thought had some love in him.
Come home one day, and he's packing his trunk.
Told me, time come when even the best of friends must part.
Said he was gonna send me a special delivery some old day.
I watched him out the window.
When he carried that trunk out and down to the train station,
said if he was gonna send me a special delivery,
I wasn't gonna be there to get it.
I done found out,
the harder you try and hold onto these men,
the easier it is for some gal to come and pull 'em away.
Molly done learned that.
[audience laughing]
And that's why
I don't trust nobody but the good Lord above,
and I don't love nobody but my mama.
Thank you.
[audience cheering and applauding]
[Romero] These young people,
the landscape they're walking on is sacred.
August gave his life... for these words on the paper.
He was diagnosed with cancer in 2005.
It's that horrible choice that you have to make
if you have a terminal illness, is, you know, extend life,
or don't take medications or don't do chemotherapy,
and live your life feeling pain, but being very present.
And he chose the latter.
In that time, he and his assistant worked ceaselessly to finish Radio Golf
and he got to that finish line. Just barely.
When a young actor enters one of those plays,
it's almost like picking up the baton that he left there.
For a whole new generation of people
to take on sort of consciousness that he is offering.
Everybody gets this box set of all ten plays.
[audience cheering and applauding]
[Viertel] If you're not a member of that culture
or those communities,
to try to feel you've come to understand
another culture or community very different than your own,
in a very visceral and emotional way,
through a set of people you've come to love and believe in
and, I think, that's as valuable a thing as anyone can do
in trying to create cross-cultural community.
Because August gave voice to all those people,
these young people can find their voice.
You know, this is not about all of them becoming actors or directors.
This is about knowing that they can be anything that they wanna be.
They can do anything that they want to do.
Everything is possible, right?
All right, so we got some doctors, we got some lawyers, we got some actors.
I don't know if who wins is that important, necessarily.
Just getting there and getting... First of all, just getting up there,
to stand up there and do it takes a lot of guts.
I'm sure that there were some young actors who went up there on that stage,
and even if they didn't wanna be actors,
because of August Wilson and because of those words,
they probably had great revelations in their lives.
And great healing.
And there may have been some artists who were created in that.
People who said, "This is what it is that I wanna do."
In a world that sometimes really is lacking in compassion,
I think it's honorable to wanna be an artist.
The judges have already told me
that this was the hardest decision that they have had to make in ten years.
[audience cheering and applauding]
All right.
Ah! Third place.
$1,000 to Teslyne Junior.
[audience cheering and applauding]
[indistinct conversation]
Second place, $2,000...
Nia Sarfo.
[audience cheering and applauding]
First place, $3,000...
Gerardo Navarro.
[audience cheering and applauding]
We thank you for coming and we'll see you next year!
[uplifting music playing]
[indistinct chatter]
Fantastic.
I'm so happy.
-[man] It's awesome. -Yes.
[Nia] This experience, honestly, all I can say is I'm extremely grateful.
It really was about the journey and not the destination.
And I'm still figuring things out for myself.
But I've proven to myself that I'm capable of doing a lot.
If you have enough gut and grit inside of you,
you can do anything that's possible.
[chuckles] When you don't got a lot,
you always seek to have more, you get hungry.
You know? And I always,
always knew I was destined to be something more.
There was something out there for me. I knew it.
[Callie] Because of his stories,
I have a better idea of who I am as a person.
I have a better idea of the ancestry that I hold.
It helped me develop as an individual, as an African American female,
and then as a theater artist,
I feel more agency over who I am and over what I bring to the table.
I'm thankful for the opportunity.
August gave me the chance
to put myself out there for the very first time,
and showed me...
you're worth seeing.
You're worth seeing.
[Gerardo] Winning was, of course, something I didn't expect.
But I think it says a lot about his work as well.
That it is for everyone,
and that it speaks for those that are not seen.
I have talks amongst my friends
where we talk about the lack of representation
and we think that's because we are the change.
We have to be the change.
[Washington] Just knowing someone cares, you know, that's our job.
We have to do all we can for them, encourage them,
and lift them up and build them up and give them a chance to compete.
Not everybody makes it to the top.
And what's the definition of the top anyway?
[Davis] You have to remember the final step, which is significance.
And significance is something much higher than awards.
It's about legacy.
That thing that you wanna leave behind once you're gone.
Winning is not going to get you anything
because as soon as you have that award in your hand,
the three famous words is gonna haunt you in your life.
And the three famous words are gonna be, "And now what?"
And now what?
[Wilson] I am standing here in my grandfather's shoes.
They are large shoes.
They are the shoes of a whole generation of men
who left a life of unspeakable horror in the South
and came north, searching for jobs, and a way to live life with dignity
and whatever eloquence the heart can call upon.
They came from the cotton fields of Georgia
and Arkansas and Mississippi,
from the chain gangs of Alabama,
from the cane fields of Louisiana,
and in my grandfather's case, from the tobacco fields of North Carolina.
They came carrying bibles and guitars.
Marked men seeking a way of bludgeoning
and shaping the malleable parts of themselves
into a new identity as free men of definite and sincere worth.
They brought with them manners and a way of life
that corresponded to their temperament and sensibilities.
And it is this field of manners and rituals of social intercourse,
out of which I make my art.
I thank you.
My grandfather thanks you.
By honoring me, you honor him.
And by virtue of that, you honor yourselves.
This year. What do you got?
All right, so here's the pitch.
Two Trains Running. Memphis. Act one. Scene two.
["Never Break" playing]
♪ Oh, yeah ♪
♪ We got a good thing, babe ♪
♪ Whenever life is hard ♪
♪ We'll never lose our way ♪
♪ 'Cause we both know who we are ♪
♪ Who knows about tomorrow ♪
♪ We don't know what's in the stars ♪
♪ I just know I'll always follow ♪
♪ The light in your heart ♪
♪ I'm not worried about us ♪
♪ And I've never been ♪
♪ We know how the story ends ♪
♪ We will never break We will never break ♪
♪ Built on a foundation ♪
♪ Strong enough to stay ♪
♪ We will never break ♪
♪ As the water rises ♪
♪ And the mountains shake ♪
♪ Our love will remain ♪
♪ We will never ♪
♪ No, no, never ♪
♪ We will never ♪
♪ No, no, never ♪
♪ It's more than a good sensation ♪
♪ It's more than a passing fling ♪
♪ You are the explanation ♪
♪ Of what love really means ♪
♪ It's bigger than you and me ♪
♪ It's one plus one equals three ♪
♪ When we talk about forever ♪
♪ Then forever's what we mean ♪
♪ So I'm not worried about us ♪
♪ And I've never been ♪
♪ No matter what may come our way ♪
♪ We will never break We will never break ♪
♪ Built on a foundation ♪
♪ Stronger than the pain ♪
♪ We will never break ♪
♪ As the water rises ♪
♪ And the mountains shake ♪
♪ Our love will remain ♪
♪ We will never ♪
♪ No, no, never ♪
♪ We will never ♪
♪ No, no, never ♪
♪ We will never ♪
♪ No, never ♪
♪ We will never ♪
♪ No ♪
♪ The world is dangerous ♪
♪ Throw it all at us ♪
♪ There's nothing we cannot take ♪
♪ We will never break We will never break ♪
♪ Built on a foundation ♪
♪ Strong enough to stay ♪
♪ We will never break ♪
♪ As the water rises ♪
♪ And the mountains shake ♪
♪ Our love will remain ♪
♪ We will never ♪
♪ No, no, never ♪
♪ We will never ♪
♪ No, no, never ♪
♪ We will never ♪
♪ No, never ♪
♪ We will never ♪
♪ No ♪
♪ We will never ♪
♪ No, never ♪
♪ We will ♪
♪ No ♪