Educators Introduction

Welcome to the McCarter Resource Guide Educator Edition for August Wilson’s Radio Golf.  This guide has been assembled to complement both your students’ theater-going experience as well as your class curriculum by offering a variety of interesting and engaging activities for both pre-show and post-performance instruction and enjoyment.

Radio Golf is the final installment of Mr. Wilson’s epic, ten-play Pittsburgh cycle, his closing reflection on a decade-by-decade history of the African-American experience and ode to his Hill District roots.  This production follows last season’s memorable production of Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, the ninth play in the cycle and his homage to the first decade of the twentieth century.  Teaching-artists from the Education Department are well aware of the power of the latter production to touch both the hearts and intellects of the students who read the play and attended our student matinees.  Time and again, area high school students with whom we work name Gem of the Ocean as one of their two favorite plays and note that the play in performance made them see themselves and their history in a new and deeper way.  Radio Golf has the same power to touch, to teach students about the past and the present and to enlighten and inform their future.

This production of Radio Golf affords opportunities for enrichment in literature, history, sociology, civics, theater and media/visual arts.  Students can explore national and local history and the African-American experience; debate the issues surrounding urban renewal/redevelopment and gentrification and their relationship to race and class; investigate their own neighborhood and consider the challenges of its future renewal, planning and development; ponder the themes of identity, integrity, honor and ambition in their own lives; as well as creatively contemplate many of these topics and themes in imaginative, artistic activities.

Our student audiences are often our favorite audiences at McCarter, and we encourage you and your students to join us for a discussion with members of the cast after the performance.  Our visiting artists are always impressed with the preparation and thoughtfulness of McCarter’s young audiences, and the post-performance discussion offers a unique opportunity for students to engage intellectually with professional theater practitioners. We look forward to seeing all of you for a wonderful discussion about Radio Golf and August Wilson, a true genius of the American theater.