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Award-Winning Actor, Director and Writer Ruben Santiago-Hudson to Speak at April 14 Event at Lindsey Wilson College

Tony-award winning actor and acclaimed screenwriter to discuss his distinguished career and his collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson.

by Duane Bonifer

COLUMBIA, Ky. (04/07/2025) — Area residents will have a rare opportunity to hear from a world-renowned artist who has distinguished himself on stage, screen, and TV.

Award-winning actor, director and writer Ruben Santiago-Hudson will give a talk at 4:45 p.m. on Monday April 14, at Lindsey WIlson College.

Santiago-Hudson will speak via Zoom in W.W. Slider Humanities Center Recital Hall. His talk -- which is co-sponsored by the Lindsey Wilson chapter of Sigma Tau Delta English Honors Society and the Theatre Program -- is free and open to the public.

"Ruben Santiago-Hudson is among the most respected entertainment professionals today," said Lindsey Wilson theatre professor Robert Brock. "He has worked as an actor, playwright and director, and he has won awards in all three areas, which is very rare."

Santiago-Hudson's awards include a 1996 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play for his role as Canewel in August Wilson's Seven Guitars.

Other honors include a 2006 Humanitas Award for writing the HBO film adaptation of his play Lackawanna Blues, and in 2009 he received the NAACP Lifetime Achievement Theatre Award.

Santiago-Hudson's writing credits include the screenplay for the critically acclaimed Netflix adaptation of Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, which was directed by Kentucky native George C. Wolfe.

Critics have called Santiago-Hudson one of the "master interpreters" of Wilson's works. Santiago-Hudson has either acted in or directed all of the works of the Tony Award and two-time Pulitzer Prize recipient. Wilson selected Santiago-Hudson to perform in the playwright's autobiographical one-man show, How I Learned What I Learned, in the years after Wilson died in 2005.

"This will be an amazing opportunity to hear from one of the giants of American theater, film and TV," said Brock. "And because of Ruben Santiago-Hudson's close friendship with August Wilson, people will also get to learn more about one of the greatest American playwrights."

Earlier this semester, the Lindsey Wilson chapter of Sigma Tau Delta held a campus screening of the Netflix adaptation of Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and at the recent Sigma Tau Delta national meeting in Pittsburgh, several Lindsey Wilson students visited the August Wilson African American Cultural Center.

"At our visit to the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, our tour guide was a Pittsburgh native who has met Ruben Santiago-Hudson," said Lindsey Wilson English professor Karolyn Steffens. "She spoke highly of him and the work he continues to do with the center, as well as promoting Wilson's work for a new generation, and we are thrilled to have this opportunity to learn from him."

Lindsey Wilson College is a vibrant liberal arts college in Columbia, Kentucky. Founded in 1903 and affiliated with The United Methodist Church, the mission of Lindsey WIlson is to serve the educational needs of students by providing a living-learning environment within an atmosphere of active caring and Christian concern where every student, every day, learns and grows and feels like a real human being. Lindsey Wilson has an enrollment of more than 4,000 students, and the college offers 28 undergraduate majors, five graduate programs and a doctoral program. The college's 28 intercollegiate varsity teams have won more than 120 team and indvidual national championships.

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Award-winning actor, director and writer Ruben Santiago-Hudson will give a talk at 4:45 p.m. on Monday, April 14, at the Lindsey Wilson College W.W. Slider Humanities Center Recital Hall.

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