The Great Migration serves as the catalyst for arguably all of August Wilson’s works, but it is at the very heart of The Piano Lesson. Each of its characters grapple with their personal place in the enormous movement, from Berniece, who fled the South after her husband’s violent death, to Boy Willie, who refuses to abandon his native land. These simple yet haunting images of the Migration create a snapshot into the epic journey itself, a path that more than 6 million African Americans made in the hopes of securing a safer and better life.
Ultimately Wilson becomes a myth maker, recasting the amber past in the crucible of his memory. The products of his alchemy are plays that, as their characters make decisions in the light of the hard-earned lessons of their ancestors, point to the future. (5)
— Dr. Sandra Shannon, The Dramatic Vision of 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
August Wilson Talk Series: August Wilson’s Women
While male characters are often the central drivers of the narrative in August Wilson’s American Century Cycle, the women are often the theatrical backbone. This conversation centers on the women at the center of the Cycle — Aunt Ester in Gem of the Ocean, Rose in Fences, Berniece in The Piano Lesson and Risa in Two Trains Running.
Featuring Seret Scott, award-winning actor, playwright and director of numerous August Wilson productions; actor Ebony Jo-Ann, who starred in our reading as Ma Rainey; Michele Shay, director in the August Wilson series; and actor Roslyn Coleman, who appeared in our reading of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.” Journalist Charisse Jones will host.
August Wilson on Playwriting
I start with the decade. I know some things when I start. I know, let’s say, that the play is going to be a 1970s or a 1930s play, and it’s going to be about a piano, but that’s it. I slowly discover who the characters are as I go along. In The Piano Lesson, for instance, the question I had was, “Can you acquire a sense of self-worth by denying your past?” So I said, “Okay, let me invent this situation and place characters on stage who ask that question. They don’t necessarily have to answer it, but let’s pose the question.” So I know I want to do that, but how I’m going to do that I very often don’t know. I do know some things before I start.
Excerpted from an interview by Elisabeth J. Heard, published in the African American Review, Vol. 35, No. 1, Spring 2001.
‘The Best Blues Singer in the World’
“I once wrote a short story called ‘The Best Blues Singer in the World’ and it went like this: ‘The streets that Balboa walked were his own private ocean, and Balboa was drowning.’ End of story. That says it all. Nothing else to say. I’ve been rewriting that same story over and over again. All my plays are rewriting that same story. I’m not sure what it means, other than life is hard.”
A 1999 interview published in The Art of Theatre, No. 14, conducted by Bonnie Lyons and George Plimpton
Home: A poem by August Wilson
Written for Yale Repertory Theatre, 1985
My face in the mirror.
The buttons on my coat.
The coin in my pocket.
These are my compatriots.
My compatriots & I
ask for your attention.
We are going to begin now.
Q&A with August Wilson: Influences
By Boris Kachka, New York Magazine
Q: Whose work first gave you the idea of what it was to be an artist?
A: Dylan Thomas, in 1965, when I was a 20-year-old poet. It’s interesting, because I go back and I read Dylan Thomas and it’s obscure, the use of language and the rhythms. I spent years trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about. I still don’t know, but it sounds good. Around ’69, I discovered LeRoi Jones and the black poets of that era. But Thomas, the tweed jackets and the cool, booming reading voice! I actually did a reading of his work at a fashion show with two guys in tuxedos playing violin. That was in Pittsburgh in 1965. They paid me $50, and I thought, Oh, this is going to be easy. And it was another ten years before I made another $50.
Q: Which character did you most want to be in grade school?
A: Napoleon. His will to power, the idea of being a self-made emperor. This was at 13, eighth grade. Favorite kid’s books? I recall reading Nancy Drew, whatever I could get my hands on. I didn’t like the Hardy Boys.
Q: You dropped out of high school but spent a few years reading alone in a library. What struck you most?
A: Anthropology, history. Social anthropology. I remember Lévi-Strauss’s The Origin of Table Manners; I couldn’t read it, didn’t understand what it was about, so I put it back. I read Margaret Mead and worked my way up. I wasn’t too big on literature at that time. I was trying exciting things like theology —still trying to figure out the Trinity, how there could be three in one.
Q: First great biography you read?
A: Arna Bontemps. Washington’s Up From Slavery. And an odd book that now seems quite interesting was Moss Hart’s autobiography, Act One. I read that when I was 20 and didn’t know anything about theater.
Q: What’s your single greatest artistic influence?
A: The blues, without question. The earlier, the better: Charley Patton, Skip James.
Q: Do you listen to hip-hop? Favorites?
A: Tupac. He was head and shoulders above those guys. I started with Public Enemy and Tupac. I’ve got some OutKast, Snoop Dogg. Not stuff I listen to every day, but I don’t want to be culturally deficient.
Q: What would your colleagues be surprised that you like?
A: Opera. The German operas. Italian operas are cool, too, man, but I got into opera in 1963, before my first Bessie Smith record.
Q: What’s the first musical you ever saw?
A: That’s easy. Zorba, with Anthony Quinn, in 1983. I sat there and went, That’s Anthony Quinn! That’s Anthony Quinn! I was thrilled with the idea that that was him in person. He played everybody: Italian, Mexican, Eskimo. I thought it was remarkable.
Q: What plays made you think you wanted to write plays yourself?
A: Well, yeah, Ed Bullins—I think In the Wine Time, the first time I saw black characters of that type, what they would call in today’s language the underclass, presented onstage. That and Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Banzi Is Dead.
Q: What Hollywood star did you have a crush on as a boy?
A: That would be Melina Mercouri; I’m talking about 8 years old here! I’m a De Niro fan. I went eleven years without seeing a movie; the last one before that, February 1980, was De Niro and Scorsese in Raging Bull, and when I went back, it was Cape Fear, with De Niro and Scorsese. I picked up right where I left off at.
Q: Do you watch TV?
A: Very, very little. I’ve never seen Seinfeld, never seen The Cosby Show, I just don’t watch it. I saw half of Oprah one time. I’d rather read.
Q: What was the first play or work of art that you hated?
A: I’ve seen some terrible plays, but I generally enjoy myself. One play I walked out of, I have a tremendous respect for the author. That was Robert Wilson, something called Network, which consisted of Wilson sitting on a bunk, the dialogue of the movie Network looped in while a chair on a rope went up and down. After 45 minutes, I thought, Okay, well, I got this.
Q: What’s on your iPod?
A: Kurt Weill, three different versions of Threepenny Opera. A dance arrangement I just love. And then I got some blues, I got Brian Stokes Mitchell’s Man of La Mancha. Sting. I’ve got Stephen Foster, looking at it now. I’ve got Sarah Vaughan, I’ve got Rod Stewart, I’ve got some sermons.
Q: A sports figure who affected you?
A: My hero when I was 14 was Sonny Liston. No matter what kinds of problems you were having with your parents or at school, whatever, Sonny Liston would go and knock guys out, and that made it all right. He was my hero until 1969, when he got knocked out by Leotis Martin, and when he hit the canvas, it was like a giant oak falling. I couldn’t see the TV because I was crying. At the same time, I was crying because I was relieved, in the sense that I didn’t have any more heroes, and now I had to be my own hero. That was liberating in a way. I really felt like—I’m in charge now.
The Piano Lesson 