Audience Context Guide

For even more information on August Wilson and the world of the play, check out our Piano Lesson Context Guide–or better yet, pick up a paper copy during one of our performances.

‘Genesis’ Series, by Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence’s Genesis Series (1990) describes a passage from the book of Genesis in the King James version of the Bible. The series reflects Lawrence’s youthful memories of passionate sermons about the Creation given by ministers at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem where he was baptized in 1932.  The selections from this series, along with the final painting in this gallery, There are Many Churches in Harlem, paint a visual picture of the Christian world Avery hopes to build within his new community in the Hill District, and the world in which he and Berniece have integrated themselves.

There are Many Churches in Harlem

Artist Spotlight: Jamil Jude, Director

Maegan Clearwood, Dramaturg: You have a strong background in new play development as opposed to classics, so can you tell me a little about how you came to this position as a director?

Jamil Jude, Director: Jason [Loewith] has known me for about five years through National New Play Network. I think he’s seen me as a young director, a young theatre artist through NNPN, but also as someone who had a deep interest in telling stories, especially people from African diaspora. During my time at Arena Stage, I got the opportunity to work with a lot of people who are interpreting August Wilson’s work, and I found a connection inside of it. It’s like one of those life-affirming moments: I was in a rehearsal hall, surrounded by people who had worked on August Wilson’s plays, and in that moment I felt like, “Oh, okay, my stories are important to American theatre.”

MC: What are some of the themes that you really like to explore as a director?

JJ: I’m all into character relationships. I try not to say that I like love stories, but I do, I can’t get away from that. Anytime there’s a play where two warring factions both have equal voice, those are my favorites. I read a historical play yesterday, so obviously you know who wins, but the playwright did such a good job at making the loser inevitably be the loser that it just wasn’t fun. So I love issues of ambiguity, so that when I walk out, I wasn’t told whose side I should be on, I was told to think about these issues in maybe a way I never thought about before.

Various genres of African-American music are at the forefront of all of August Wilson’s plays, and The Piano Lesson is no exception. In it, the characters explore three main styles of music: prison work songs, the boogie-woogie, and, one of Wilson’s most significant influences, the blues:

“The music is a specific cultural response of black America to the world, the circumstances and the situation in which they’ve found themselves… If you didn’t know anything about African people and nothing about black people in America, and someone gave you blues records, you could listen and find out what kind of people these were … their symmetry, this grace … you’d be able to construct their daily lives.” 

The Piano as a Character

“The very validity of the word ‘inanimate’ is called into question in this play, especially as it pertains to the large, sound-producing, dominant physical object that is the piano. If the root word anima refers to that which has breath, spirit, or life (Webster’s also lists anima as ‘soul’ while Jung regards anima as the true inner self of the individual, as opposed to persona), then the piano that plays on its own is animate, not inanimate. Its alive qualities are what keeps Berniece from touching it, for fear of waking the spirits.”

—Nomos, Mysticism, and Power Objects in August Wilson’s  “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” “Gem of the Ocean,” and The Piano Lesson,” by Marian Wolbers

“We were land-based agrarian people from Africa. We were uprooted from Africa, and we spent 200 years developing our culture as black Americans. And then we left the South. We uprooted ourselves and attempted to transplant this culture to the pavements of the industrialized North. And it was a transplant that did not take. I think if we had stayed in the South, we would have been a stronger people. And because the connection between the South of the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s has been broken, it’s very difficult to understand who we are.” — August Wilson

“When your back…

“When your back is pressed to the wall you go to the deepest part of yourself, and there’s a response–It’s your great ancestors talking. It’s blood memory.”

— August Wilson