PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio, AP) — One of Philadelphia’s greatest contributions to theater, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Charles Fuller, has died.
Fuller lived much of his life in Canada, but his Philadelphia roots had a major impact on his plays.
He was best known for the play that won him the 1982 Pulitzer, “A Soldier’s Play,” which he adapted for the screen as “A Soldiers Story,” set in a segregated army unit during World War II.
It was set a long way from the James Johnson public housing development in North Philadelphia where he grew up, but in a 2020 interview for American Theater, he said his protagonist, Drill Sgt. Vernon Walter, was based on his childhood neighbors.
“Black people who had so internalized racism, they tried to distance themselves from their own community,” said Fuller.
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“The best way to dispel stereotypes and massive lies is telling something as close to the truth as you can,” Fuller told Newsday. In one review of his work, The New York Times said “clichés of form, plot and character shatter like skeets at a shooting range.”
The work has attracted a who’s who of Black acting talent. The film version starred a young Denzel Washington, who had appeared in its first stage incarnation in New York alongside Samuel L. Jackson. A 2005 revival off-Broadway lured Taye Diggs, Anthony Mackie and Hershey, Pennsylvania-born Steven Pasquale.
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. Grier won the Tony for a featured actor and the play won best revival.
“It has been my greatest honor to perform his words on both stage and screen, his genius will be missed,” Grier tweeted in mourning.
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Fuller went to Roman Catholic High School and attended Villanova before enlisting in the Army.
He attended La Salle when he returned and helped found the Afro-American Arts Theatre in Philadelphia, and wrote his earliest plays for them. He later moved to New York, then Toronto where he passed away of natural causes on Monday, his wife Claire Prieto-Fuller said.
A national tour of Roundabout Theater’s revival of “A Soldiers Play” begins in December. It comes to Philadelphia in January.
In addition to his wife, Fuller is survived by a son, David, a daughter-in-law, four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.