Christopher Rawson named newest ATCA Emeritus member

Christopher Rawson named newest ATCA Emeritus member

The ATCA Executive Committee unanimously voted earlier this month to honor the career and service of Christopher Comstock Hart Rawson — critic, board member, academic, occasional performer, and celebrator of the legacy of Pittsburgh native August Wilson — with election to ATCA Emeritus member status.

This ATCA honor is awarded sparingly to recognize careers of 20 years or more and service to the profession and to ATCA. Emeritus members, designated by the Executive Committee, are restricted from serving on the Executive Committee but have all other member rights and privileges and do not pay membership dues. The two most recent ATCA Emeritus honorees have been Dan Sullivan in 2018 and Sylvie Drake in 2022.

Rawson, 84, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was born in 1941 in Providence, Rhode Island, the first child of actor Richard Hart, and adopted by his mother’s second husband Johnathan Rawson.. After earning his AB from Harvard and masters and Ph.D. from the University of Washington, he joined the English faculty of the University of Pittsburgh in 1968, where he has been Emeritus since 2018. He combined academics and criticism when he joined the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as critic and theater editor (full time 1983-2009). Rawson served 2001-2009 on the editorial Board of the Best Plays Theater Yearbook, the season summary established in 1920 by Burns Mantle,

Rawson is perhaps best known, locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally as a champion and expert on the works of Pittsburgh native August Wilson. In a 1999 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette column, Rawson first crafted the term “Pittsburgh Cycle” to capture the full sweep of Wilson’s plays, and the August Wilson Estate later added the complementary phrase “American Century Cycle” to describe the ensemble of Wilson’s plays.

Rawson lives his passions, serving as the program chair of the Daisy Wilson Artist Community (named for Wilson’s mother) that has restored Wilson’s Pittsburgh Hill District childhood home as the August Wilson House. He is the ATCA liaison to the Theater Hall of Fame (on which ATCA members vote annually) and for which he chairs the nominating committee. He has been Chair of ATCA’s Executive Committee twice (1991-1993 and 2007-2011), has served as the ATCA historian since 2019 (a role created by then-chair Martha Wade Steketee to retain his organizational knowledge nearby). And after many years serving on the Foundation ATCA Board, he is now acting in an advisory capacity.

Rawson has been married to Pittsburgh television producer Mary Rawson (also known as Mary Sweenie), since 1976. Many may know her as cousin Mary Owl in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Rawson has four children — one son and three daughters — and lives in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood.

– Submitted by Martha Wade Steketee with selected background materials submitted by Bill Hirschman