He’s absent, yet he’s there

Before each evening’s show, the cast and staff of “Radio Golf” form a circle on the Mark Taper Forum stage and share prayers, thoughts and favorite lines of dialogue in honor of their missing friend and mentor.

“We gather every night and say thank you to him for this wonderful gift,” says actress Denise Burse, “and for the courage to go through with this with everything he is going through personally. He has given us not just an artistic gift, he has given something immortal to the world.”

August Wilson’s spirit looms large in all of his works, but never more so than in this production. “Radio Golf,” which examines the price of success for blacks in the ‘90s, is the long-awaited finale of his 10-part dramatic cycle about African American life. The project, which took nearly a quarter-century to complete, is seen as both a masterwork of the theater and a treasure of American social history.

Celebration of the cycle’s completion has been tempered by last month’s announcement that the 60-year-old writer is battling liver cancer. The news took the stage world by surprise. However, “Radio Golf’s” actors, all veterans of his plays, had long wondered if something was wrong, because while Wilson had participated in the spring world premiere at Yale Repertory Theatre, he had stayed at home in Seattle instead of coming to the Taper and plunging into the writing and rewriting that often accompany the development of his plays.

“We had our suspicions because he hadn’t been around,” says James A. Williams, who portrays the ambitious business partner of “Radio Golf’s” hero, real estate scion and aspiring mayor Harmond Wilks (Rocky Carroll). Wilson reportedly had kept quiet about his condition because he didn’t want to interfere with the progress of the L.A. production. Once it became clear that word was about to hit the papers, director Kenny Leon called the five cast members and told them what was going on.

“Right after that, we had to do a show,” says Williams. “All I can say is that there is so much love for the man in this production already. But the stakes got raised because we got the answer to a question.”

Williams, who has known Wilson for 27 years, sees his performance as “something I get to do for my friend. I’m trusting those around him will be taking care of him. I will be helping to take care of the most precious thing in his life -- his work. I get a chance to help him finish his mission.”

Wilson inspires a singular loyalty and passion among actors, who speak of his gift for giving voice to the everyday stories of everyday blacks. “I feel like I’m a part of a very noble cause by being in the last play of the cycle,” says Carroll, who received a 1990 Tony nomination for Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson.”

“I’m so lucky to be saying his words, to be working with him,” says John Earl Jelks, who plays a neighborhood wise guy-turned-wise man in “Radio Golf.” “It’s just like being with the perfect woman. Just being with a person that loves you for you. This play was already so big for me. But now, with his illness, I just wish I could give him a body part or organ. I would do that. I owe him my career and my life.”

Four years ago, Jelks says, he approached Wilson outside a San Francisco theater and asked if he would come see him in a production of “The Piano Lesson” up the street. Wilson not only attended the show, he also told Jelks afterward that they would work together soon. Within days the actor was invited to appear in a revival of the playwright’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.”

In 2003, Jelks was selected to understudy one of the major roles in the original company of “Gem of the Ocean.”

Less than a week later, Jelks’ wife died in a traffic accident, leaving him alone with three young children. “My life was spiraling,” he says. “August Wilson brought me back.” Before the show reached New York, Leon, who was playing the role Jelks was understudying, left the cast. (He would later return as the director.) Jelks found himself on Broadway. “Every night,” he says, “my character asks if he can wash his soul. So every night August Wilson’s play healed me. He also spent a lot of time himself, talking to me about death. He gave me one of his favorite blues CDs -- about a man losing his wife. I listened to it every day. I still do.”

Anthony Chisholm, who has made a specialty of playing elders who channel spirits of the past in “Gem” and “Radio Golf,” refuses to think about anything coming to an end: “I’m not looking at this as being his last play, or even the last play of the cycle. This is a continuance of his telling a story. That’s what he does, tell stories.”

The Taper production of “Radio Golf” marks the conclusion of Gordon Davidson’s 38-year reign as artistic director of Center Theatre Group. Davidson saw “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” in 1984 and soon made CTG part of the network of regional theaters Wilson used to develop his works before sending them to New York. The “important link” in that chain, Davidson says, was producer Benjamin Mordecai, who was instrumental in getting Wilson’s plays to Broadway even though they often defied the formula for success there.

Davidson, who retired in December, says he has stayed beyond his contract with CTG because he wanted to see “Radio Golf” through -- a task that became more complicated with Wilson’s illness and the death in May of Mordecai, who had been fighting cancer for several years.

Wilson already was feeling ill when “Radio Golf” premiered at Yale, says Davidson, and so script development fell behind schedule. “The miracle is that, thanks to a couple of key players, we were able to keep things going.” He calls Wilson’s dramaturge Todd Kreidler “a unique bridge for us with August” and says Leon has become “August’s director,” following in the tradition of Lloyd Richards and Marion McClinton.

A second work session was held at the Taper, during which Wilson communicated with his brain trust by phone, fax and e-mail and Leon shuttled between Los Angeles and Seattle. Davidson offered to fly Wilson down on a private plane and sneak him into a rehearsal, but the playwright had to decline. Many changes have been added in the show’s final weeks in L.A. “It became harder and harder for him,” Davidson says, “but I think he was grateful to have had another crack at it.”

“He’s given 23 years of his life to completing his cycle,” says Leon. “No one is as committed to the lives of African Americans and, thereby, Americans. All of his work is grounded in naturalism, yet it is full of poetry and hope. What should be. What could be.” He pauses. “We’ll go on from here and maybe spend a year or two before ending up in New York. Hopefully, August will be standing next to me all the way.”