Playwright Lynn Nottage wrote: “His work was & remains a major source of inspiration for me & in many ways became my invitation to write plays.”īorn in Philadelphia, Fuller attended Villanova University and then joined the Army in 1959, serving in Japan and South Korea. “It has been my greatest honor to perform his words on both stage and screen, his genius will be missed,” Grier tweeted in mourning. Grier won the Tony for a featured actor and the play won best revival. It made its Broadway debut in the pandemic shortened season of 2020-21 with David Alan Grier and Blair Underwood and earned seven Tony nominations, including best play revival. A 2005 revival off-Broadway lured Taye Diggs, Anthony Mackie and Steven Pasquale. The film version starred a young Denzel Washington, who had appeared in its first stage incarnation in New York alongside Samuel L. The work has attracted a who’s who of Black acting talent. “I’d just like to be considered a playwright fortunate enough to have written a ‘hit,’ and who wants to keep on writing plays that break through the wall,″ he told The New York Times in 1982. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1982 and two years later was made into the Oscar-nominated best picture “A Soldier’s Story,” for which Fuller wrote the screenplay and earned an Oscar nomination. It dissected entrenched racism as well as internal divisions in the Black military community, wrapping it in a murder mystery. In one review of his work, The New York Times said “clichés of form, plot and character shatter like skeets at a shooting range.”įuller’s most famous work, “A Soldier’s Play,” used a military setting in its tale of the search for the murderer of a Black sergeant on an Army base in Louisiana during World War II. “The best way to dispel stereotypes and massive lies is telling something as close to the truth as you can,” Fuller told Newsday. He was 83.įuller died of natural causes on Monday in Toronto, said his wife, Claire Prieto-Fuller.įuller’s plays were filled with complex characters and an undercutting of conventions. NEW YORK (AP) - Charles Fuller, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of the searing and acclaimed “A Soldier’s Play” who often explored and exposed how social institutions can perpetuate racism, has died.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |