Enlarge By Carol Rosegg Final act: Tonya Pinkins and Harry Lennix star in Radio Golf, the last in Wilson's cycle. "He was born to write those 10 plays," Pinkins says.

"Before that, I had been asked to play things that didn't represent my truth as a black person," Pinkins says. "So to walk into this world of characters who were people I knew was so liberating. … They talk poetically, with wisdom and common sense. August absorbed all that and allowed it to come through."

Pinkins is currently starring on Broadway in another Wilson play, though this time, the experience is bittersweet. Radio Golf, which opened Tuesday at the Cort Theatre, was the final work the playwright completed before dying of liver cancer in October 2005 at only 60.

Golf also completed Wilson's decade-by-decade series focusing on African-Americans living in the past century, a collection that includes Piano Lesson and other celebrated works, among them Fences, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and Joe Turner's Come And Gone. Golf's director, Kenny Leon, says Wilson was completing a draft of the show, which had its first run in spring 2005 at the Yale Repertory Theatre, only weeks before he died.

That doesn't surprise Pinkins. "He was born to write those 10 plays," she says. "He knew what he was here for, even if he didn't know that he was leaving at 60."

Others who have acted in Wilson's plays — a list that includes such noted names as James Earl Jones, Leslie Uggams, Laurence Fishburne, Samuel L. Jackson and Phylicia Rashad — also speak of Wilson's dedication and sense of purpose and the opportunities he provided for black actors in a commercial sphere where diversity isn't always a priority.

Fishburne, who won a Tony in 1992 for his performance in Wilson's Two Trains Running, recalls seeing the Broadway production of Joe Turner before that. "I was struck by the poetry of the language and the authenticity of the characters. And selfishly, it became clear to me that as I grew older, there would be all these roles I could play. His plays are populated by African-American men of varying ages and many personality types and points of view."

Wilson's plays took place mostly in Pittsburgh, his native city, "but every state has its own Pittsburgh," says Uggams, a 2001 Tony nominee for Wilson's King Hedley II.

His "was the voice that told how we felt as a community," says Uggams, who describes Wilson as "the African-American storyteller" while also stressing the universality of his characters and themes. Those transcend race to express, in Fishburne's words, "the American experience and the human experience."

Rashad points to the role of Aunt Ester, a recurring figure in Wilson's dramas, whom she portrayed in Gem of the Ocean. "Diversity aside, he offered characters which had never been seen before," she says. "I don't know of another personality in the whole of theater like Aunt Ester."

Ester's legend is evoked in Golf, which introduces characters further removed from slavery and African spirituality. "This is (Wilson's) first play dealing with the middle class, where others dealt with the common man," says Leon, who worked on revisions of the play with Wilson and his dramaturge, Todd Kreidler, through the playwright's last summer. "But August reminds us that all the plays and the generations are connected. We all have a responsibility to move forward in a positive way."

Moving forward on Golf without Wilson has been poignant, say Leon and others involved with the production. But bringing the show to Broadway "also feels victorious," says Wilson's widow, Constanza Romero, who remembers her husband as "a very fair, just man who wanted to see justice in the world. To not see it filled him sometimes with rage, sometimes with intense empathy and also with this incredible energy to do something."

Golf's cast pays homage to that energy and spirit nightly. "Every time we go on stage, we have a company prayer beforehand," says actor Harry Lennix, who co-stars with Pinkins. "And every time we mention August, because we wouldn't be here without him."

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Enlarge 2005 photo by AP Wilson: Radio Golf was last play before he died of cancer.