Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Charles Fuller died of natural causes on Monday at age 83.
Through a spokesperson, his wife Claire Prieto-Fuller confirmed she was by his side at the time of death at a Toronto hospital.
The 1981 Off-Broadway production of his murder mystery about a a platoon of Black troops at a Louisiana Army base in 1944 was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film. The work was retitled “A Soldier’s Story” and starred Howard Rollins, Denzel Washington, Robert Townsend, William Allen Young, Patti LaBelle and Adolf Caesar in 1984.
The play was revived by New York’s Roundabout Theater Company on Broadway in 2020, winning the award for best revival of a play at the Tony Awards a year later. During his acceptance speech, director Kenny Leon stressed the importance of younger audiences knowing about writers like Fuller.
“We need our young people to learn about all of our amazing writers … we need to hear all of the stories. When we hear all of the stories, we are better,” he said.
Leon share news of the death on Tuesday, alongside a photo of him and actor Nnamdi Asomugha backstage with Fuller and the words: “Rest In Peace and Power in the Greatness that is Sir Charles Fuller.”
Actor David Alan Grier, who appeared in the film adaptation and won the Tony Award for best featured actor for the acclaimed revival, referred to Fuller as an “amazing and wonderful artist” in his remembrance.
“It has been my greatest honour to perform his words on both stage and screen, his genius will be missed,” Grier said.
Born March 5, 1939 in Philadelphia, Fuller attended Villanova University and then joined the Army in 1959, serving in Japan and South Korea.
The McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J. produced his first play while he worked as a housing inspector in his nearby hometown. Titled ″The Perfect Party,″ the interracial marriage-based show moved off-Broadway in 1969.
Fuller experienced a career breakthrough writing plays for New York City’s Negro Ensemble Company, which first mounted “A Soldier’s Play.” His other works include “The Brownsville Raid” and the Obie Award-winning “Zooman and the Sign.” In 2015, he received the Dramatists Guild’s Flora Roberts Award for his extensive body of work.
Roundabout Theatre Company’s national tour of “A Soldier’s Play” starring Norm Lewis kicks off in December. The story is also reportedly being adapted into a limited TV series by Sony Pictures Television.
Fuller leaves behind his wife, son David Ira Fuller, his daughter-in-law, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
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