When Lesley Malin graduated from Washington University in 1988 with a degree in English literature and drama, she received a compliment on her valedictory speech from playwright August Wilson, the recipient of an honorary degree that year. Wilson, whose “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” had just been awarded best new play by the New York Drama Critics’ Circle, said, “Now that was a real commencement speech.” She couldn’t have known where this scrap of praise might lead, but it spurred her, she says, over the course of the next decade in New York, to catch every Broadway premiere she could by Wilson, including “The Piano Lesson,” “Two Trains Running” and “Seven Guitars.”