“Keeping it Real”: August Wilson and Hip-Hop

Abstract

Wilson’s provocative keynote address to the Theatre Communications Group (TCG) Conference in June 1996 incited national discussions, op-ed pieces, journal articles, conference papers, and a much-ballyhooed public debate between Wilson and his arch nemesis Robert Brustein, Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater, moderated by Anna Deavere Smith in January 1997. It also provided the impetus for a National Black Theatre Summit, convened in March 1998, in which black theater scholars, artists, and practitioners from around the country joined together to consider the state of black theater in contemporary America. As the spark for this explosion of dialogue, Wilson’s TCG Address challenges the material, economic conditions that govern black artistic production. He confronts the status quo and promotes black control of what Stuart Hall terms “the politics of representation,”1 these politics concern not only understanding the power inherent in the visible representation of African Americans but with controlling the mechanisms of production that dictate the dissemina-tion of these images. In this speech Wilson advocates a black art that is not suppressed by the dominant culture but an active expression of African American experiences, a practice that is historically grounded, socially committed, and culturally specific. Directly and indirectly, Wilson’s discourse considers strategies for how the black artist in America confronts the dilemma of achieving commercial success in artistic mainstream while remaining true to the cultural roots of his or her art and the socio-political needs of black people. In so doing, I believe that Wilson, using the vernacular of contemporary rap culture, demands that black artists “keep it real.”