In memoriam

There Is A Grace Beyond Matter

How Do We Transform Loss? August Wilson asked this question in a remembrance of Benjamin Mordecai III in the September issue of American Theatre, which will publish the text of Wilson's last play, "Radio Golf," in its November issue.

Mordecai was an associate dean at Yale School of Drama and a former managing director of Yale Rep. He is the only person to have worked on all ten of August Wilson's plays. He also produced Tony Kushner's Angels in America, possibly the only American play of recent decades that is likely to be as well regarded as August Wilson's work . Wilson refers to him as "my friend, my partner, my confidant and my brother." In memoralizing Mordecai, August Wilson wrote these words:

How do we transform loss? How do we mitigate its fierce hold on our consciousness? Time has false contours. Its healing balm is essentially a hoax, a palliative that has little reward. There are some wounds that time broadens. Ben's absense continues to spread over my life like a brutish conspiracy, and I try to find those glorious remarks of faith that sustain and reward the spirit. Now, haunted by the specter of my own death, I find solace in Ben's life, a life lived with dignity and purpose magnified by his indomitable spirit. There is a grace beyond matter. It is our way of knowing, and accepting, the splendor of death with its voluminous atlas. We find it when we must."