I am thinking about...playwrights. My mother is a playwright. Or rather, she was. She doesn't write much anymore. My favorite play she wrote was a one-woman show starring Kathleen Turner called Tallulah!. How can you miss pairing Kathleen Turner with Tallulah Bankhead? I remember sitting in the theatre next to my mother and laughing until my sides hurt. She was embarrassed. She said I laughed too loud.

It was, like all her writing, so different from her. She is shy, often painfully so. She rarely swears, and is most certainly not a drunkard. Tallulah Bankhead was the opposite of my mother: boisterous, swore like a sailor, loved her liquor -- and raising hell even more.

At the end of the play my mother said I clapped too loud. Maybe. But the play was funny, and Kathleen carried it for two hours brilliantly. There is something so thrilling about single actors carrying an entire play, laying themselves so vulnerable. If you forget a line, the show does not go on.

So it was with awe that I watched three teenagers recite gut-wrenching scenes from the plays of another playwright who has come to my neighborhood. One who packs a wallop. August Wilson. The acclaimed, Tony and Pulitzer Prize award-winning, August Wilson. Author of modern masterpieces like "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," "Fences," "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," "The Piano Lesson"…the list goes on and on.

I watched these young people stand there in front of three hundred of their peers in GPB's studio C. Alone. In a moment, turning from teenager to fierce orator of raw and confronting words. Somehow, watching these young people with bright and exciting futures ahead of them channel such raw and untamed emotion was captivating.

You see, the language Wilson uses in his work is unapologetically uncensored -- on one hand, difficult to hear, but on the other hand empowering and beautiful for these young people.

I had meant to leave after my welcome speech to the hundreds of school kids who had gathered to learn more about August Wilson. I had work to do. But, after hearing those powerful and confronting words I was frozen in my seat. I dare not move. I dare not move an inch from the words of August Wilson, the angry, defiant words of a playwright channeling the emotions and experience growing up as a black man in America.

When the young actors finished, the room was left in awe and silence. The lights dimmed and we watched excerpts from a new biography about August Wilson. The program: August Wilson: The Ground On Which I Stand, will air February 20 at 10 p.m. on GPB. It will encore on GPB Knowledge Monday, February 23 at 8 p.m. and Tuesday, February 24 at 1 a.m., 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.

Here you will find the playwright in his own words -- the words behind the words. It was a sort of revelation for all of us. August Wilson was, the kids said later, such a gentle man, almost a shy man.

The playwright and the play are often so different. And that is the genius of their art. Art is simply transformative – in this case for both the actor and the audience member. I am delighted that we could offer these students an afternoon with one of the best, August Wilson.

I invite you to watch the documentary with us and see the dynamic between the playwright and the play. It may, like it did for me, leave you in awe. Speechless.