THE 'KING' AND HIS THRONE PLAYWRIGHT BRINGS HIS MOVING STORIES TO THE STAGE LIKE NO ONE ELSE CAN.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

Here's a story told by playwright August Wilson that you won't see on a stage. At least not as it actually happened. This story is true.

The year: 1967 or 1969 (Wilson isn't entirely sure which). The place: the playwright's native Pittsburgh, the setting of all of his plays from ``Ma Rainey's Black Bottom'' to the current ``King Hedley II,'' which opened Thursday at the Mark Taper Forum. The action: an off-duty bus driver rounds a corner and gets into a minor fender-bender with another car.

Wilson saw it happen. No injuries, no major damage. A quick exchange of information and the two drivers should have been on their way.

But that's not what happened.

``The guy jumps out of the car, bangs on the hood of his car and said, 'I ain't going for no more draws!' '' Wilson recalls. ``He began to, like, circle the cars, and he just kept saying, 'I ain't going for no more draws!' He went berserk. They actually called the fire station, and a fire truck came out. They put this guy in a straitjacket, fastened it, strapped him in and hauled him away.''

More than 30 years later, Wilson says, the scene resonates. It's still inspirational.

``This was nobody's fault. It's a draw, and he would rather it be my fault or your fault,'' Wilson says. ``He couldn't win, couldn't lose. It's like, 'Let's have a conclusion to something.'

``And, to me, that struck me like one of the most stunning things I've ever witnessed in my whole life. And I often wonder where was he at that would lead him to saying, 'I ain't going for no more draws.'

``I think, unconsciously - or maybe consciously - I've been trying to create a moment like that on stage.''

Trying and succeeding. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner (for ``Fences'' and ``the Piano Lesson''), Wilson, 55, is easily the most celebrated African-American playwright living. A crusader against the marginalization of black theater, Wilson is, as his director Marion McClinton said during a recent playwrights forum, ``the trademark that defines the field.''

Audiences who see ``King Hedley II'' at the Taper should have no trouble spotting the ``no more draws'' scene. There are a couple.

When he began writing this, his most recent play, Wilson had an idea, and characters he wanted to explore and a social backdrop. He didn't necessarily know where the story would lead him.

But he had a central image, one that would open the first scene of the play following a prologue. His hero, an ex-convict named King Hedley, trying to get a handle on his life despite interference from the past, would be working in the dirt in the corner of a tenement yard of Pittsburgh's Hill District.

``I knew King was going to plant some seeds,'' Wilson says, ``and I knew someone was going to step on them.''

Wearing a cap and a dark sportcoat, Wilson isn't bothered by the late summer heat as he chain smokes his way through a pre-rehearsal interview. Soft-spoken and congenial, he talks freely and easily about subjects ranging from his plays - written and unwritten - to music, and social progress. Ask him if he still keeps a hand in with poetry, and Wilson pauses, looks to the sky, and recites a poem he wrote following the birth of his now 3-year-old daughter.

The playwright, who now lives in Seattle with his wife, costume designer Constanza Romero, was in Los Angeles earlier in the year when the Taper mounted his 1982 play, ``Jitney.'' But ``Jitney'' didn't need revision. ``King Hedley'' has undergone some major changes since its December premiere at Pittsburgh's Public Theatre and a subsequent production in Boston. The premiere ran 3 1/2 hours. The playwright's not checking his watch, but he expects the Taper production to lose at least 15 minutes.

``No doubt it was long, but it was extremely powerful,'' says Stephen Klein, managing director of the Public Theatre. ``I looked at it as a work in progress. We were just lucky to have the first crack at it.''

Since Boston, entire scenes of ``King Hedley'' have been subtracted and added, and the structure reworked. The character of Aunt Esther, whose spirit haunts many of the characters, is dead as the play opens. Nobody, the playwright contends, will be able to write about the play without mentioning her. Audiences wondering about Aunt Esther will meet her as a young woman in Wilson's next - as yet unwritten - play which will be set in the year 1904.

Wilson's 10-play cycle, chronicling the experience of blacks in America in each decade of the 20th century, is drawing to a close. ``King Hedley II,'' set in 1985, brings the total to eight with only the 1904-set play and one for the 1990s to complete the cycle.

``King Hedley'' is set in 1985, but it could just as easily be somewhere in the '70s or the '90s. No matter what the decade, Wilson says his themes are universal: The play isn't about unemployment or crime in the 1980s. Like most of his plays, ``King Hedley'' is a tale of love, honor, duty and betrayal.

``People would be saying, 'You don't have any drugs in the play,' but that's not my perception,'' says Wilson. ``Certainly drugs are around, but that's not what I'm writing about. Someone else would perceive (1985) in a different way and they'd be correct.''

This is also the first time Wilson has tried his hand at a sequel. ``Hedley'' picks up 36 years after his play ``Seven Guitars'' ended. In that play, King's mother, Ruby, is pregnant but doesn't know the identity of the baby's father. She had an affair with the first King Hedley - a man who killed another man over his name, and consequently never tells anybody his name is King.

But Ruby decides to pay tribute to Hedley. If the child she is carrying in ``Seven Guitars'' is a boy, Ruby plans to name him King, even if it means messing with some seriously bad karma.

``I was sitting in the audience, and every night she said that, a little shiver would go through my spine,'' says Wilson speaking about his characters as though they somehow escaped from the page and wrested control of their lives away from him. ``Why would you want to do that. Why would you want to put that legacy on this kid by naming him King?''

Well, of course, Ruby's child was a boy, meaning Wilson could use his 1980s play to see how Hedley's namesake turned out and as an opportunity to flesh out the con man, Elmore, also mentioned in ``Seven Guitars.''

``King Hedley'' also allowed Wilson to examine the structure of a black American family, admittedly a family in crisis.

``I was starting to think of the break-up of the black family, but you start to look at the structure and you realize there hasn't been any,'' Wilson says. ``Everybody is familiar with the extended family concept in the black community. There are certain public policies and practices that encourage the breakup of black families.

``For instance: the welfare laws that said a man couldn't be in the household. You had men hiding their clothes, pretending they don't live there when a a welfare worker comes. Doesn't it provide a more stable family when a man is in the house?''

Wilson agrees that many of these topics could just as easily be part of a play set at the very end of the 20th century. Whether they will still be on his mind when he writes his play for the 1990s - likely to be set in 1999 - remains to be seen.

``You still have drive-by shootings; you still have this family structure; you still have blacks with the inability to get jobs,'' Wilson says. ``I think maybe things got a little worse.''

``KING HEDLEY II''

Where: Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; through Oct. 22. Tickets: $30 to $44. Call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

``I was starting to think of the break-up of the black family, but you start to look at the structure and you realize there hasn't been any,'' August Wilson says of his play.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer