The American Film Institute on Monday announced its top 10 films of the year, including Pixar’s jazz themed “Soul” and two of Chadwick Boseman’s final films: the August Wilson adaptation “Ma...

NEW YORK (AP) — Producers of the Broadway musical “Mean Girls” have decided not to restart when authorities allow theaters to reopen in New York City, the second and likely not last established...

NEW YORK (AP) — Like many of those involved in the making of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” it’s not easy for Viola Davis to summarize what playwright August Wilson has meant to her except to answer,...

Chadwick Boseman surges onto the screen as fast-talking trumpeter Levee in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” like a man on an electrified tightrope -- balancing precariously between hope and cynicism,...

NEW YORK (AP) — The University of Pittsburgh has acquired the archive of the late playwright and Pittsburgh native son August Wilson, a trove that contains recordings, letters, artwork, poetry,...

NEW YORK (AP) — Netflix on Monday previewed George C. Wolfe's August Wilson adaptation “Ma Rainey's Black Bottom,” showcasing Chadwick Boseman's final performance opposite Viola Davis' powerhouse...

“He was a gentle soul and a brilliant artist, who will stay with us for eternity through his iconic performances over his short yet illustrious career. God bless Chadwick Boseman.” — Denzel...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Chadwick Boseman, who played Black American icons Jackie Robinson and James Brown with searing intensity before inspiring audiences worldwide as the regal Black Panther in...

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The day she became CEO of the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, Janis Burley Wilson walked through the Downtown Pittsburgh building’s reflective glass doors to find...

NEW YORK (AP) — How is a great actor made? For Jonathan Majors, the 30-year-old breakout star of “The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” it started in drama school. It swelled with the discovery of...

PITTSBURGH (AP) — August Wilson, poet, playwright and Pittsburgher, wrote in the language of the blues. He learned it in his hardscrabble youth spent in the Hill District, and he learned it from...

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Actor Denzel Washington has helped mark the start of renovations at playwright August Wilson's childhood home in Pittsburgh.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Grants totaling $1.1 million will help support important African-American heritage sites including the homes of jazz musician John Coltrane and playwright August Wilson, a Virginia location central to the slave trade and civil rights locations in Birmingham, a preservation group announced Friday.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Pittsburgh's August Wilson Center for African American Culture has hired a new CEO and president to run the nonprofit as it recovers financially from near foreclosure.

Janis Burley Wilson was named Thursday as the center's new leader. She's not related to the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright.

Wilson has been a primary events programmer for center since 2014.

NEW YORK (AP) — Select list of winners of the 2017 Tony Awards, announced Sunday:

Best Musical: "Dear Evan Hansen."

Best Play: "Oslo."

Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics): "Dear Evan Hansen."

Best Revival of a Play: "August Wilson's Jitney."

Best Revival of a Musical: "Hello, Dolly!"

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play: Kevin Kline, "Present Laughter."

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play: Laurie Metcalf, "A Doll's House, Part 2."

NEW YORK (AP) — Select nominations for the 2017 Tony Awards, announced Tuesday.

Best Musical: "Come From Away," ''Dear Evan Hansen," ''Groundhog Day The Musical," ''Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812."

Best Play: "A Doll's House, Part 2," ''Indecent," ''Oslo," ''Sweat.

Best Book of a Musical: "Come From Away," ''Dear Evan Hansen," ''Groundhog Day The Musical," ''Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812."

NEW YORK (AP) — Producers of the Broadway show "Groundhog Day" said the musical will open Monday night with star Andy Karl once again leading the cast despite having to miss the previous show after injuring his knee.

Karl hurt himself during a preview performance Friday, forcing the cancellation of Saturday's matinee. An understudy filled in for him at the Friday-night performance. The show, at the August Wilson Theatre, doesn't run on Sundays.

NEW YORK (AP) — Producers of the Broadway musical "Groundhog Day" said it will open as planned, but injured star Andy Karl's status was unclear.

Karl hurt himself during a preview performance Friday, forcing the cancellation of Saturday's matinee. Understudy Andrew Call was to fill in for him at the Friday night performance.

An opera about Negro Leagues baseball star Josh Gibson, whose power hitting rivaled Babe Ruth's, will have its world premiere in Pittsburgh in April.

"The Summer King," presented by Pittsburgh Opera , premieres April 29. Gibson's story also figured in "Fences," the movie starring Denzel Washington that was originally a play by Pittsburgh native August Wilson.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Fresh from her best supporting actress Oscar win for her role in "Fences," Viola Davis is at Harvard University to receive the 2017 Artist of the Year Award from the Harvard Foundation.

Davis is attending the Cultural Rhythms Festival on Saturday. She briefly came on stage before taking a seat to watch a series of cultural musical performances by students.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — If you're planning a trip to Pittsburgh, you'll need to learn a few things. Yinz is local for y'all. Carnegie is pronounced Car-NAY-gie (as in Andrew Carnegie, who made a fortune in Pittsburgh's steel industry, and whose name adorns libraries, museums and more.) And you don't get French fries WITH your sandwich at Primanti's. You get fries ON your sandwich.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Fans of "Fences" may be disappointed that the film won just one of its four Oscar nominations. But a pilgrimage to playwright August Wilson's hometown, Pittsburgh, might offer some consolation.

"Fences" is one of 10 plays that Wilson wrote chronicling African-American life. Nine of the plays are set in Pittsburgh and each play depicts a different decade. The city's Hill District, where Wilson grew up, offers a rich map of places connected to him.

NEW YORK (AP) — There was someone important missing when the cast and creators of the film "Moonlight" joyfully crowded a Los Angeles-area stage last month to accept the Golden Globe for best film drama.

That was rising star Andre Holland and he had a very good reason to skip the party: He was across the country, working his current job — the August Wilson play "Jitney" on Broadway.

History was made across Tuesday's 89th annual Academy Awards nominations, where the retro musical "La La Land" reaped a record-tying 14 nominations and a wave of African-American films, led by the luminous coming-of-age portrait "Moonlight," resoundingly toppled two straight years of "so white" Oscars.

NEW YORK (AP) — A diner in Miami, a house in Pittsburgh and a pier in Los Angeles: All of them are real places where Oscar-nominated movies were filmed.

Part of "Moonlight" was shot in Jimmy's Eastside Diner in Miami. Scenic spots around Los Angeles featured in "La La Land" included the Hermosa Beach Pier. And in Pittsburgh, "Fences" was filmed in a house that perfectly evokes playwright "August Wilson's world," according to his widow.

NEW YORK (AP) — When August Wilson's widow first toured the set for the new movie based on his play "Fences," she carefully examined the modest two-story brick house, the small yard and the tree where a ball hung from a rope — and she wept.

Constanza Romero, who lost her playwright husband in 2005, has visited many theatrical sets for Wilson's most popular and perhaps most personal play, but the one used for its first film adaptation reconnected her with him.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Denzel Washington is feeling pretty good at the moment. It's mid-December in Los Angeles, Washington is a few weeks shy of his 62nd birthday, and the Screen Actors Guild has just recognized his adaptation of the August Wilson play "Fences" for its ensemble cast. He's also finally getting feedback from audiences as the film trickles out to theaters before opening wide on Christmas Day.

The blue music of "Fences" sings with a ferocious beauty in Denzel Washington's long-in-coming adaptation of August Wilson's masterpiece of African-American survival and sorrow.

Transfers from stage to screen often serve up only a pale reflection of the electric, live-wire theater experience. But Washington, in his good sense, has neither strained to make August's Pulitzer Prize-winning play particularly cinematic nor to "open it up" much from the confines of the staged settings.

NEW YORK (AP) — The guy who gave us the song "Big Girls Don't Cry" isn't tearing up over the imminent closing of the Broadway show about his life, "Jersey Boys."

"I'm not sad," Frankie Valli said by phone. "I never dreamed it would last 11 years. The beauty about this whole situation is it's not over. It is now beginning to happen in other parts of the world."