I wanted to note the passing of someone who has influenced profoundly my views towards the possibility of a revival in the American Theater.

In the late 1980's a number of August Wilson's works openned at the Huntington Theater in Boston, where I was living at the time.  This gave me the chance to see something raw and exciting, works that no reviewer had the chance to either approve of or dismiss.

I found his plays to be a profound marriage of the historical and the mystical.  I often noticed the experience to be a cure for a disease that afflicts me on occasion:  the tendency towards seeing our situation in pessimistic or cynical terms.

What I saw in what he was saying, was that the respect for the dignity of life, makes one's life dignified.