George C. Wolfe can pinpoint the exact moment that sparked his career as a director and dramatist. “We were supposed to sing this song,” recalls Wolfe, 68. “Here was this monumental human being who changed history, and then history forgot him,” says Wolfe, himself a gay man, who has lived in New York City since 1979. Though contemporaries in adjacent disciplines, Wolfe and Weems had never had a real conversation before meeting on a steamy July day in a downtown Manhattan studio. Here, the two discuss their childhoods, art as activism and what they feel is still left to accomplish.

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Persons: George C, Wolfe, “, ”, Tony Kushner’s, —, ’, he’s, Henrietta, Ma, “ Rustin, Barack, Michelle Obama’s, Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King Jr, Rustin, Carrie Mae Weems, Julie Mehretu, Lyle Ashton Harris, Weems Organizations: Broadway, Public Theater, York Shakespeare, Netflix, Manhattan’s Guggenheim Museum, Tate Locations: Kentucky, America, York, Washington, New York City, Portland, Brooklyn, Syracuse, N.Y, London, Pergamon, Berlin —, Manhattan