The Ground on Which I Stand by August Wilson

The Ground on Which I Stand by August Wilson

Fierce and passionate, The Ground on Which I Stand is August Wilson's eloquent and personal call for African American artists to seize the power over their own cultural identity and to establish permanent institutions that celebrate and preserve the singular achievements of African American dramatic art and reaffirm its equal importance in contemporary American culture.

Delivered as the keynote address of Theatre Communications Group's 11th biennial conference in June 1996, this speech refocused the agenda of that conference, and spurred months of debate about cultural diversity in the American theatre, culminating in a standing-room-only public debate at New York City's Town Hall.

August Wilson was a well-known American playwright whose work has frequently been praised as among the best in the country's theater. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, his first play, won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for outstanding new play in 1984-85. Fences, his second play, received the Tony Award, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for best play of the year in 1987. The New York Drama Critics' Circle named Joe Turner's third play, Come and Gone, the greatest play of 1987-1988. Wilson won his second Pulitzer Prize for The Piano Lesson in 1990. In 2005, he passed away.