54th Annual Benefit Luncheon to Honor August Wilson

New Dramatists presents its 54th Annual Benefit Luncheon to Honor August Wilson. The nation’s oldest non-profit workshop is dedicated to the development of new playwrights. August Wilson will be honored with their 2003 Lifetime Acheivement Award, presented by Whoopi Goldberg, currently starring in the current revival of Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Goldberg’s co-star, Charles S. Dutton and Brian Stokes Mitchell, who starred in Wilson’s King Headley II, will also be on hand to offer tributes. The honorary co-chairs for the event are Walter Cronkite and Ben Mordecai, who has produced every one of Wilson’s New York productions. August Wilson is the author of Jitney, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson, Two Trains Running, Seven Guitars, and King Headley II. These works explore the heritage and experience of African Americans, decade-by-decade, over the course of teh twentieth century.