Imagine a playwright who could give the entire world a way to understand what it was like to be a black man or woman in the inner city in any particular decade throughout the twentieth century. Then imagine that this playwright, a black man himself who had grown up in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, could give us not one, not a couple, but ten superb plays, each chronicling the African-American experience in a specific decade so that, together, they constitute a compendium of the entire century.

Such a playwright really existed. He was born in the final days of World War II as Frederick August Kittel, but he changed his name to take his mother’s maiden name since she raised him. As August Wilson, he wrote the ten plays that constitute an unprecedented output, completing the last one just months before his death two years ago. Along the way, he earned two Pulitzer Prizes, a Tony Award and accolades including being the first African-American to have a theater named for him on Broadway.

Now, for the first time ever, it is possible to see all ten plays together – if you have the time and the money.

The Kennedy Center is presenting readings of all ten plays in the Terrace Theater on the top floor of the Center. Normally, a “reading” means a bare stage and a group of actors wearing street clothes reading the script from music stands. Not here. These are what the Center calls “fully staged readings” with seven distinguished directors handling the plays, twenty-five actors performing the seventy-some-odd roles in costumes designed by Helen Hayes Award winner Reggie Ray on a set designed by Tony Award winner David Gallo.

The cast will still be reading from scripts, but the Artistic Director of the series, Kenny Leon (director of “A Raisin in the Sun” with Phylicia Rashad, Audra McDonald and Sean Combs) designed a very special binder for the scripts. Leather bound and embossed with Wilson’s profile and signature, “they are roughly the size of a small bible,” says Leon, “I hope the audience will soon forget they even have the scripts.”

The series, “August Wilson’s 20th Century,” begins with three performances of each play in the chronological order of its subject. This will take most of the month of March. Then, from Sunday March 30 to Sunday April 6, they will do each just once more so it will be possible to sit through the entire century in just over a week.

Here’s a look at the individual plays:

• 1900s – In “Gem of the Ocean” Aunt Ester who has been a “Soul Washer” for the community for centuries approaches the end of her life at age 287.
• 1910s – The great northern migration is explored in “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.”
• 1920s – The only one of the plays not set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” takes place in a recording studio in Chicago.
• 1930s – Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, “The Piano Lesson” isn’t about learning to play the piano, it is about the lesson a carved heirloom of a piano has for a family.
• 1940s – Flashbacks from a funeral illustrate the life of seven residents of the Hill District in “Seven Guitars.”
• 1950s – Wilson’s other Pulitzer Prize was for “Fences,” the story of a former baseball star, now with his career over, reduced to the status of garbage man.
• 1960s – Urban renewal threatens the community that already exists in the Hill District in “Two Trains Running.”
• 1970s – White people in the suburbs may have taxis, but the residents of the Hill District are served by a “Jitney” service that will pick people up where regular taxis won’t.
• 1980s – “King Hedley II” is an ex-con trying against all odds to make a life for himself, his wife and their baby.
• 1990s – As further development in a time of economic expansion encroaches on the Hill District, the house where we first met Aunt Ester a century before may be threatened in Wilson’s last play, “Radio Golf.”

All of the directors and designers, as well as almost all of the cast members,  worked with Wilson during his incredibly productive career. Many speak of the effect his work had on them and their careers. They speak of the language of his plays, of the way each of the characters ring true and of the honesty of his depiction of life “on The Hill.”

Of course, by “The Hill” they don’t mean what we do here in Washington. This isn’t life on Capitol Hill. The Hill District is a black neighborhood on the east side of downtown Pittsburgh, the same “hill” that Stephen Bochco had in mind when he created the television series “Hill Street Blues.”

It is a district where Wilson spent much of his youth and where he witnessed the life he came to write about. In the words of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s drama critic, Christopher Rawson, “Mr. Wilson’s plays present this world as a crucible in which the identity of black America has been shaped … the archetypal northern urban black neighborhood, a construct of frustration, nostalgia, anger and dream.”

What Rawson doesn’t mention, however, is just how much humor Wilson included in his plays. Real people laugh. Sometimes just to keep from crying, but they do laugh, and Wilson’s people are real people. It is part of what makes them so compelling and what makes their stories ring so true.

At $65 a seat for each play, it would take quite a commitment of money as well as time to attend each of the ten. Some of the performances are already sold out and there are even some plays that have sold out all four of their performances. However, a sampling of Wilson is still available and that isn’t a bad way to get to know his vision and his art. Each play can be approached as a single entity without requiring knowledge of places, people or events in other plays.

Tickets can be ordered by phone at 202-467-4600 or online at www.kennedy-center.org

August Wilson’s 20th Century – ten fully staged readings in the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater:

“Gem of the Ocean” – March 4, 5, 8 and 30
“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” – March 6, 7, 8 and 30
“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” – March 9, 11 and April 1
“The Piano Lesson” – March 12, 13, 15 and April 2
“Seven Guitars” – March 14, 15, 16 and April 3
“Fences” – March 16, 18, 19 and April 4
“Two Trains Running” – March 20, 21, 25 and April 5
“Jitney” – March 22, 26 and April 5
“King Hedley II” – March 23, 27 and April 6
“Radio Golf” – March 28, 29 and April 6

Brad Hathaway is the editor/reviewer for Potomac Stages, a website and email service covering theater in Washington, Maryland and Virginia (www.PotomacStages.com). He has covered theater for Theatre.Com, Musical Stages Online, The Connection Newspapers and such magazines as Show Music, The Sondheim Review and American Theatre. He and his wife live on Capitol Hill. He can be reached by email at Brad@PotomacStages.com.