For more than a decade, Mark Clayton Southers has been a big part of the local theater scene, most notably as a playwright and as founder and artistic director of Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Co.

Playwrights has produced work by numerous local talents living and dead, but would be worthy of acclaim if only for its regular stagings of plays by August Wilson, which have been arguably the best such productions in town.

In fact, Southers himself was only days past premiering a production of Wilson’s Fences that he had directed when he was seriously injured in a car accident.

That was May 11. Southers would spend the next five weeks unconscious and nearly five months hospitalized while he underwent numerous surgeries, including efforts to save one of his legs from amputation. (Southers is pictured in the hospital with one of his young sons.)

Those efforts succeeded, and Southers finally returned home, to the Hill District, where he grew up. He is even back in the director’s chair, helming a new production of Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, set to debut next month, at Downtown’s August Wilson Center.

However, Southers' household’s finances were slammed. A new gofundme campaign is looking to help.

The campaign’s goal is $25,000, and it culminates with a Nov. 23 benefit and tribute for Southers, to be held, appropriately enough, at the Wilson Center.

A $25 donation to the gofundme campaign gets you a ticket to the event.

More details are here.