The drivers at the busy jitney station at Wylie and Erin on the Hill are starting to notice that when I come around, there's a beautiful woman, as well. "I figure it makes me more welcome," I said. Actually, it's just been twice -- just over a month ago, with Phylicia Rashad, and earlier today, with Tamara Tunie.

Above: Tamara Tunie stands in front of August Wilson's childhood home at 1727 Bedford Avenue on the Hill. The Wilson (then Kittel) apartment was around back, on the right. Note the general dilapidation. Below: Ms. Tunie stands on the vacant hillsde lot that would be 1839 Wylie Ave., site of the mystical Aunt Ester's house in "Gem of the Ocean" and an object of commercial-spiritual contention in "Radio Golf," which Tunie is co-producing on Broadway. Note the proximity to Downtown. Click photos for larger image.

In each case I was showing them some of the sites associated with August Wilson and his 10-play Pittsburgh Cycle, including, of course, one of the oldest and biggest jitney stations on the Hill, the kind immortalized in the earliest written of the 10 plays, "Jitney."

Tunie is the Pittsburgh actress well known as the medical examiner who comes in regularly on "Law & Order: SVU" and says, "yes, that's a dead body" -- something she could be expected to be good at, since her family runs a funeral home in Homestead, where she's from.

She was born in McKeesport. "So what do you claim as your home town?," I asked. "I say I'm from Pittsburgh," she said. She also went to CMU along with a group that included another Pittsburgher, Rob Marshall, back when we called him Robby.

I'd guess Tunie bleeds back and gold. She's certainly high on Pittsburgh, which helps explain her newest role as one of the "above the line" producers of "Radio Golf," Wilson's final Pittsburgh Cycle play -- final in being set in 1997, the last decade of the century, and final in being the last written, completed as he was dying in 2005.

Although best known for her TV work, where she's been a regular on "As the World Turns" among much else (check it all out at www.IMdb.com), Tunie is also an accomplished stage actress with several Broadway credits, most recently as Calpurnia in the Broadway "Julius Caesar" that starred Denzel Washington and Colm Feore. But she's never performed in an August Wilson play.

	The Post-Gazette maintains an index page to its August Wilson coverage going back about 10 years

Over coffee (mine -- Tunie doesn't seem to require artificial stimulants), we mused over what roles she could play -- Risa in "Two Trains Running" and Berniece in "The Piano Lesson," for two, though there are more. But then she said, "At some level, I think this was the role I was to play in August Wilson" -- meaning producer.

Her first producer credit was on "Spring Awakening," which gives her a winning track record right out of the gate. She figures she's the only African American producer on Broadway right now, though on "Radio Golf" she's being joined in that category by Wendell Pierce (HBO's "The Wire"), who co-produced "Jitney" off-Broadway. They've agreed to raise a "considerable proportion" of the $2.1 million "Radio Golf" needs.

Some of that will come from Pittsburgh. "I'm passionate about Pittsburgh and theater," Tamara says. "And August Wilson comprises both. ... My agenda is to bring as much African American support to the table as possible." She also hopes to influence the play's marketing plan, to go much more aggressively after black audiences beyond the traditional theater-goers.

"Radio Golf" will star Harry Lennix ("24") and Tonya Pinkins (Tony Award for "Jelly's Last Jam," nominations for "Play On!" and "Caroline, or Change"), plus veteran Wilson actors Anthony Chisholm, John Earl Jelks and James A. Williams. And it will occupy the Cort Theatre, where Wilson had his Broadway debut with "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" in 1984.

	Above:Street signs on the Hill recollect the names of characters in August Wilson's plays. Below: A small listing of August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle and a couple of Post-Gazette illustrations high on the front of the New Granada Theatre are among the few visible remembrances of his plays on today's Hill. Click photos for larger image.

In each case I was showing them some of the sites associated with August Wilson and his 10-play Pittsburgh Cycle, including, of course, one of the oldest and biggest jitney stations on the Hill, the kind immortalized in the earliest written of the 10 plays, "Jitney."

Tunie is the Pittsburgh actress well known as the medical examiner who comes in regularly on "Law & Order: SVU" and says, "yes, that's a dead body" -- something she could be expected to be good at, since her family runs a funeral home in Homestead, where she's from.

She was born in McKeesport. "So what do you claim as your home town?," I asked. "I say I'm from Pittsburgh," she said. She also went to CMU along with a group that included another Pittsburgher, Rob Marshall, back when we called him Robby.

I'd guess Tunie bleeds back and gold. She's certainly high on Pittsburgh, which helps explain her newest role as one of the "above the line" producers of "Radio Golf," Wilson's final Pittsburgh Cycle play -- final in being set in 1997, the last decade of the century, and final in being the last written, completed as he was dying in 2005.

Although best known for her TV work, where she's been a regular on "As the World Turns" among much else (check it all out at www.IMdb.com), Tunie is also an accomplished stage actress with several Broadway credits, most recently as Calpurnia in the Broadway "Julius Caesar" that starred Denzel Washington and Colm Feore. But she's never performed in an August Wilson play.

"Radio Golf" had its premiere at Yale Rep in April, 2005 (the only time I saw it). As was his practice, Wilson re-wrote it extensively for the second production, at L.A.'s Mark Taper Forum that July, even though his fatal liver cancer was diagnosed in June. The next production was in January, 2006, in Seattle, Wilson's home, in hopes he'd be able to see it, but he died Oct. 2.

"Every word is August's," says Tunie of the Broadway script, which leaves open the possibility that Wilson left some further post-L.A. changes with his dramaturg, old Pittsburgh friend Todd Kredler, or director, Kenny Leon. Since Seattle there have been productions at Baltimore's CenterStage in March, 2006, and Boston's Huntington Theater in September. The final pre-Broadway tune-up, when Lennix and Pinkins joined the cast, was at Chicago's Goodman Theater this January.

When it finally comes to Pittsburgh, most likely to the Pittsburgh Public Theater, possibly in 2008, "Radio Golf" will resonate most loudly, because it is all about lively current conflicts between commercial redevelopment of the Hill and its historical and spiritual legacy. Right now, that legacy is largely ignored -- witness the dilapidation of Wilson's childhood home, without even a plaque to mark the spot, and the possible loss of such other landmarks as the Crawford Grill (now closed) and the New Granada Theater.

As a Pittsburgher, Tunie says she wants the city to be more aware of the legacy Wilson left. He's a figure of great national and even international significance, but when you look at the state of his home on the Hill, it can seem Pittsburgh doesn't care. Or maybe everyone's just waiting for someone else to do something.

Tunie's doing something. "People say there's not enough hours in the day," says the busy actor and producer. "But I think there are."