Now firmly ensconced on Joseph Papp's throne at NYC's Public Theatre, black playwright-director-producer George C Wolfe grew up in the segregated city of Frankfort, Kentucky and received an early exposure to Gotham at the tender age of 12, accompanying his mother while she was taking doctoral courses in education at New York University during the summer of 1967. He attended Broadway performances of "Hello, Dolly!" with Pearl Bailey and a revival of "West Side Story" which knocked him out and pointed him in the direction of his life's work. Escaping to California from Kentucky, he taught acting