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• Born in Frankfort, Kentucky.
  

• Received the B.A. in directing from Pomona College in Clairmont, California where he was twice the regional winner of the American College Theatre Festival (ACTF) for playwriting.
  

• Received the M.F.A. in dramatic writing/musical theatre from New York University. He initially became a playwright and librettist upon graduation.
  

• 1975 - 1976 - His plays, Up For Grabs (Joe Thomas learns the secret to being black and the reasons for his existence--he receives a lesson in American power and exploitation as an unknown guest in the ultimate game show) and Block Party (what its like to grow up black and male-- how tough it is to move out of that predetermined condition, out of the block and on to new horizons) were the ACTF winners for the South Pacific Region.
  

• Was associated with the Inner Cultural Center in Los Angeles during the 1970s. His Back Alley Tales, a play with music, was presented there during the 1978-1979 season.
  

• His works have been presented at the Crossroads Theatre and the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theatre.
  

• 1985 - Paradise, a full-length musical with book and lyrics by Wolfe was produced at the Playhouse in the Park in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was also produced on Broadway.
  

• 1986 - His full-length musical, Queenie Pie, a story of an aging beauty queen who dreams of an escape to a tropical island with music by Duke Ellington, was produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. The libretto was also by Wolfe.
  

• 1986 - Recipient of a CBS/Foundation of the Dramatists Guild Playwriting Award for The Colored Museum.
  

• Received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Institute for Musical Theatre.
  

• 1992 - Jelly's Last Jam, the bitter story of Jelly Roll Morton's racist attitudes and his contribution to jazz, opened on April 26, 1992 at the Virginia Theater in New York. Wolfe directed and Gregory Hines starred as Jelly and choreographed the tap dancing.
  

• 1993 - Appointed artistic director of the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater (NYSF/PT). Won the Antoinette Perry Award (Tony) for his direction of the NYSF/PT production of Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, a play dealing with the politics of AIDS.
  

• 1996 - Won the Tony Award for best direction of his dance musical, Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk. The choreographer, Savion Glover also won a Tony. The play continues its run on Broadway and is on a national tour.
  

• Wolfe continues as the artistic director for the Public Theatre in New York City.
  

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  THE COLORED MUSEUM

• Had its world premiere on March 26, 1986 at the Crossroads Theatre, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Later produced by the New York Shakespeare Festival Public theater at the Susan Stein Shiva Theatre on October 7, 1986. The tele-play was also presented on PBS. It was presented in the Trueblood Theatre at the University of Michigan in February 1994.
  

• The play won Wolfe the 1986 Dramatists Guild Award. The Colored Museum is a satirical play revealing the myths and madness of the African American culture.
  

• The eleven vignettes or playlets satirize and lampoon various elements of African American culture. Still others deal with African Americans who harbor a certain kind of pain inflicted on them by a search for identity or a loss of it.
  

• His most praised vignette, "The Last Mama on the Couch Play," attacks the traditional style of black realism through Lorraine Hansberry's drama, A Raisin in the Sun and the plot and style of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf. The perceived white audience preconception of black theatre is attacked through a frantic look at black musicals and blackface.
  

• "Symbiosis" relates a middle-class black man's attempt to throw away his past identity in order to properly assimilate into the white dominated society. The struggle for identity is lampooned in "The Hairpiece" as a nearly bald black woman decides which wig to wear, an Afro wig or a long flowing one.
  

• The theme of pain is explored in the "The Gospel According to Miss Roj," "A Soldier With a Secret", and "The Photo Session" where the characters suffer the pain of a lost identity or the search for it.
  

• The first exhibit, "Git on Board," establishes the basic premise as it mocks African Americans' involuntary voyage to America through the use of a pseudo-sophisticated black stewardess and images of slaves as baggage to be discarded if not claimed.
  

• Eastern Michigan University presented The Colored Museum as a part of its regular theatre season in March 1997 under the direction of professor Wallace Bridges.
  

According to Frank Rich of The New York Times, the play addresses the theme of how African Americans can "at once honor and escape the legacy of suffering that is the baggage of their past." Some characters attempt to establish their own identities while others repress their past by creating glamorous, artificial lifestyles.

According to Jack Kroll of Newsweek, Wolfe is "just as angry at the worn out cultural and psychological patterns that in his view prevent blacks from achieving and celebrating their own identities."

John Simon of New York Magazine wrote, "this is a sophisticated, satirical, seriously funny show that spoofs white and black America alike. It is remarkably unafraid of lampooning black foibles, which is a sign of artistic maturity."

However, an African American woman, Thulani Davis, a writer for The Village Voice, was not as impressed. She complained, "It's disturbing...That playwright Wolfe is laughing is devastating, a sign of how very deep self-hatred has run in the black psyche."

"If African Americans are to secure their identities, then they must first come to grips with the suffering, myths, madness, pain and contradictions that are the baggage of their past."

"Black American culture is a very fragmented thing. We're all trying to come up with some definition of what we are. My absolute definition of me is the schizophrenia, the contradiction...'I can't live inside yesterday's pain,' says Topsy, `but I can't live without it.'"

Davis, Thulani. "Sapphire Attire." The Village Voice, (November 11, 1986) p. 91.

Feingold, Michael. "Push Comes to Schlock." The Village Voice, (November 18, 1986.) pp. 95, 98.

Kroll, Jack. "Zapping Black Stereotypes." Newsweek, (November 17, 1986) pp. 84-5.

Rich, Frank. "`Colored Museum': Satire by George C. Wolfe." New York Times, (November 3, 1986) p. C17.

Simon, John. "Wolfe at the Door." New York Magazine, (November 17, 1986) pp. 119-20.