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The Century Cycle #4
The Piano Lesson
August Wilson has already given the American theater such spell-binding plays about the black experience in 20th-century America as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Fences. In his second Pulitzer Prize-winner, The Piano Lesson, Wilson has fashioned his most haunting and dramatic work yet. At the heart of his play stands the ornately carved upright piano which, as the Charles family's prized, hard-won possession, has been gathering dust in the parlor of Berniece Charles's Pittsburgh home. When Boy Willie, Berniece's exuberant brother, bursts into her life with his dream of buying the same Mississippi land that his family had worked as slaves, he plans to sell their antique piano for the hard cash he needs to stake his future. But Berniece refuses to sell, clinging to the piano as a reminder of the history that is their family legacy. This dilemma is the real "piano lesson," reminding us that blacks are often deprived both of the symbols of their past and of opportunity in the present.
108 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1990
About the author
August Wilson
58 books528 followersAmerican playwright August Wilson won a Pulitzer Prize for
Fences
in 1985 and for
The Piano Lesson
in 1987.
His literary legacy embraces the ten series and received twice for drama for The Pittsburgh Cycle . Each depicted the comic and tragic aspects of the African-American experience, set in different decade of the 20th century.
Daisy Wilson, an African American cleaning woman from North Carolina, in the hill district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, bore Frederick August Kittel, Junior, the fourth of six children, to Frederick August Kittel, Senior, a German immigrant baker. From North Carolina, maternal grandmother of Wilson earlier sought a better life and walked to Pennsylvania. After his fifth year, his mother raised the children alone in a two-room apartment above a grocery store at 1727 Bedford Avenue.
After death of Frederick August Kittel, Senior, in 1965, his son changed his name to August Wilson to honor his mother.
In 1968, Wilson co-founded the black horizon theater in the hill district of Pittsburgh alongside Rob Penny, his friend. People first performed his Recycling for audiences in small theaters and public housing community centers. Among these early efforts, he revised Jitney more than two decades later as part of his ten-cycle on 20th-century Pittsburgh.
Wilson married three times. His first marriage to Brenda Burton lasted from 1969 to 1972. She bore him Sakina Ansari, a daughter, in 1970.
Vernell Lillie founded of the Kuntu repertory theatre at the University of Pittsburgh in 1974 and, two years later, directed The Homecoming of Wilson in 1976.
Wilson also co-founded the workshop of Kuntu to bring African-Americans together and to assist them in publication and production. Both organizations still act.
Claude Purdy, friend and director, suggested to Wilson to move to Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1978 and helped him secure a job with educational scripts for the science museum. In 1980, he received a fellowship for the center in Minneapolis. Wilson long associated with the penumbra theatre company, which gave the premieres, of Saint Paul.
In 1981, he married to Judy Oliver, a social worker, and they divorced in 1990.
Wilson received many honorary degrees, including an honorary doctor of humanities from the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as a member of the board of trustees from 1992 until 1995.
Wilson got a best known Tony award and the New York circle of drama critics; he authored Ma Rainey's Black Bottom , and Joe Turner's Come and Gone .
In 1994, Wilson left Saint Paul and developed a relationship with Seattle repertory theatre. Ultimately, only Seattle repertory theater in the country produced all works in his ten-cycle and his one-man show How I Learned What I Learned .
Constanza Romero, his costume designer and third wife from 1994, bore Azula Carmen, his second daughter.
In 2005, August Wilson received the Anisfield-Wolf lifetime achievement award.
Wilson reported diagnosis with liver cancer in June 2005 with three to five months to live. He passed away at Swedish medical center in Seattle, and people interred his body at Greenwood cemetery, Pittsburgh on 8 October 2005.
His literary legacy embraces the ten series and received twice for drama for The Pittsburgh Cycle . Each depicted the comic and tragic aspects of the African-American experience, set in different decade of the 20th century.
Daisy Wilson, an African American cleaning woman from North Carolina, in the hill district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, bore Frederick August Kittel, Junior, the fourth of six children, to Frederick August Kittel, Senior, a German immigrant baker. From North Carolina, maternal grandmother of Wilson earlier sought a better life and walked to Pennsylvania. After his fifth year, his mother raised the children alone in a two-room apartment above a grocery store at 1727 Bedford Avenue.
After death of Frederick August Kittel, Senior, in 1965, his son changed his name to August Wilson to honor his mother.
In 1968, Wilson co-founded the black horizon theater in the hill district of Pittsburgh alongside Rob Penny, his friend. People first performed his Recycling for audiences in small theaters and public housing community centers. Among these early efforts, he revised Jitney more than two decades later as part of his ten-cycle on 20th-century Pittsburgh.
Wilson married three times. His first marriage to Brenda Burton lasted from 1969 to 1972. She bore him Sakina Ansari, a daughter, in 1970.
Vernell Lillie founded of the Kuntu repertory theatre at the University of Pittsburgh in 1974 and, two years later, directed The Homecoming of Wilson in 1976.
Wilson also co-founded the workshop of Kuntu to bring African-Americans together and to assist them in publication and production. Both organizations still act.
Claude Purdy, friend and director, suggested to Wilson to move to Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1978 and helped him secure a job with educational scripts for the science museum. In 1980, he received a fellowship for the center in Minneapolis. Wilson long associated with the penumbra theatre company, which gave the premieres, of Saint Paul.
In 1981, he married to Judy Oliver, a social worker, and they divorced in 1990.
Wilson received many honorary degrees, including an honorary doctor of humanities from the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as a member of the board of trustees from 1992 until 1995.
Wilson got a best known Tony award and the New York circle of drama critics; he authored Ma Rainey's Black Bottom , and Joe Turner's Come and Gone .
In 1994, Wilson left Saint Paul and developed a relationship with Seattle repertory theatre. Ultimately, only Seattle repertory theater in the country produced all works in his ten-cycle and his one-man show How I Learned What I Learned .
Constanza Romero, his costume designer and third wife from 1994, bore Azula Carmen, his second daughter.
In 2005, August Wilson received the Anisfield-Wolf lifetime achievement award.
Wilson reported diagnosis with liver cancer in June 2005 with three to five months to live. He passed away at Swedish medical center in Seattle, and people interred his body at Greenwood cemetery, Pittsburgh on 8 October 2005.
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December 26, 2016
During the 1930s, African Americans began the great migration north as they sought to fulfill the American dream. Part of August Wilson's Century cycle of plays, The Piano Lesson introduces the Charles family of Pittsburgh as they struggle to get ahead during the Depression. A winner of both the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, The Piano Lesson focuses on a family at a crossroads, as they grapple whether to move forward with the American dream or to return to their southern roots.
Berniece Charles has been widowed for three years. She has moved north with her adolescent daughter Maretha, and has been living with her uncle Doaker. Still grappling with her husband's death, she has declined marriage proposals from Reverend Avery even if it means bettering her place in life. At the crux of the matter is her determination to get ahead on her own even if she has no money of her own and no education, having had grown up in the south as a share cropper's daughter. Desiring to give Maretha opportunities she did not have, Berniece insists that her daughter learn piano so that she can become a teacher and advance in society.
Meanwhile, Berniece's brother Boy Willie has shown up from down south with dreams of his own. He would like to sell the piano so that he can buy the land that his family once farmed. Rather than moving north as the rest of his family has, Boy Willie would rather achieve the American dream as a respected land owner; however, Berniece and Boy Willie are at odds about the piano: whether to sell it to fulfill Willie's dream or to hang on to the family heirloom to achieve Berniece's.
August Wilson won four Pulitzers for his plays in his Century cycle, each depicting a different decade of African American life during the 20th century. In the Piano Lesson, Wilson has produced powerful, lasting characters, including Berniece and Boy Willie. I was most impressed by Doaker and his brother Wining Boy, the patriarchs of the Charles family who tell oral histories of the family's past while bringing the traditions forward into the middle decades of the 20th century.
Wilson's ten plays are a jewel for anyone studying African American history. Through his work, one can see how their life has changed from the early to later 1900s. A winner of the Pulitzer, The Piano Lesson depicts the early great migration and how life in northern cities differed for African American women and men. A four time Pulitzer winning playwright, August Wilson was a gift to American play writing and will be missed by fine arts lovers. I look forward to reading the Century cycle to completion, and rate The Piano Lesson 4.5 stars.
Berniece Charles has been widowed for three years. She has moved north with her adolescent daughter Maretha, and has been living with her uncle Doaker. Still grappling with her husband's death, she has declined marriage proposals from Reverend Avery even if it means bettering her place in life. At the crux of the matter is her determination to get ahead on her own even if she has no money of her own and no education, having had grown up in the south as a share cropper's daughter. Desiring to give Maretha opportunities she did not have, Berniece insists that her daughter learn piano so that she can become a teacher and advance in society.
Meanwhile, Berniece's brother Boy Willie has shown up from down south with dreams of his own. He would like to sell the piano so that he can buy the land that his family once farmed. Rather than moving north as the rest of his family has, Boy Willie would rather achieve the American dream as a respected land owner; however, Berniece and Boy Willie are at odds about the piano: whether to sell it to fulfill Willie's dream or to hang on to the family heirloom to achieve Berniece's.
August Wilson won four Pulitzers for his plays in his Century cycle, each depicting a different decade of African American life during the 20th century. In the Piano Lesson, Wilson has produced powerful, lasting characters, including Berniece and Boy Willie. I was most impressed by Doaker and his brother Wining Boy, the patriarchs of the Charles family who tell oral histories of the family's past while bringing the traditions forward into the middle decades of the 20th century.
Wilson's ten plays are a jewel for anyone studying African American history. Through his work, one can see how their life has changed from the early to later 1900s. A winner of the Pulitzer, The Piano Lesson depicts the early great migration and how life in northern cities differed for African American women and men. A four time Pulitzer winning playwright, August Wilson was a gift to American play writing and will be missed by fine arts lovers. I look forward to reading the Century cycle to completion, and rate The Piano Lesson 4.5 stars.
April 4, 2017
Can't wait for Denzel to make this into a movie.
November 8, 2024
11/4/24: Reread for Fall 2024 Ghosts class, and saw the 1995 Charles Dutton (as Willie Boy) film adaptation just days before the theatrical release (11/24 on Netflix) of Denzel Washington's film version directed by one son and starring another son playing Boy Willie. Samuel L. Jackson plays Doaker, kind of the stabilizing moral center, and Eryka Badu has s small part as Lucille, involving singing. I'll see it for sure, as Denzel may over time produce all of the ten August Wilson decalogue cycle.
We liked the 1995 version, and enjoyed the play, focusing our discussion for a time on the actual ghost and the "ghosts" of family and American history in the play. It's a stripped down version of the play, whereas the 2024 version appears to be an expansion.
3/26/24, Original review:
Doaker: Berniece ain't gonna sell that piano.
Boy Willie: If Bernice don't want to sell that piano. . . I'm gonna cut it in half and go on and sell my half.
The Piano Lesson (1990) is the fourth play in August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle/Decalogue, with a play for each decade of the twentieth century, focused on the history of the country seen through the lens of black families/history. The legacy of slavery, the Great Migration, Jim Crow as fundamental backdrop for the action taking place in one space on the stage. And in The Piano Lesson we are focused on one family struggling with how to preserve family/cultural history and/or how to move on.
The piano is the iconic centerpiece of the play, about which its various possible meanings is discussed. Thus, Wilson shares a kind of historical “lesson” that his characters are using to work through their family struggles. That piano is (actually) carved into/inscribed with family history, and Berniece Charles wants to preserve it as a kind of legacy; she’s sees its value as cultural artifact, as family and black history. Her brother, Boy Willie, just returned from Mississippi with a truckload of watermelons to sell that may or may not have been stolen, wanting to also sell the family piano he co-owns with his sister so he can buy a farm and no longer have to work for the white man. He’s talking about the piano having another kind of value--material, or monetary--value. He reminds me a bit of Walter in Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun: You gotta make money, the only thing that really matters, the only “legacy” you want to hang on to if you grew up poor in a racial and class caste system. Symbolism is fine, but you gotta eat!
Avery, a preacher and elevator operator in a rich white man's building, wants to marry Berniece, who’s raising a child alone, while still mourning the loss of her husband. Can she move on, herself? All the men want her to marry Avery, but she questions their (sexist) motives:
“You trying to tell me a woman can’t be nothing without a man. But you alright, huh? You can just walk out of here without me - without a woman – and still be a man. That’s alright. Ain’t nobody gonna ask you, ‘Avery, who you got to love you?’ That’s alright for you. But everybody gonna be worried about Berniece. ‘How Berniece gonna take care of herself? How she gonna raise that child without a man? Wonder what she do with herself. How she gonna live like that?’”
But they all face hurdles in life; Avery sees it this way:
“Everybody got stones in their passway. You got to step over them or walk around them. You picking them up and carrying them with you. All you got to do is set them down by the side of the road. You ain’t got to carry them with you.”
Berniece used to play the piano, until her mother died; she is teaching her daughter to play it. There’s a jazz piano player in the story, and so yes, the piano gets played. Music, food, family, friends, history, matter. But as with other plays by Wilson, the center of the play is the rich dialogue, stories that create the foundation of family and friendship, infused with humor and anguish. This play was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and is just flat out electric theater. I’d seen a production once, but finally read it and loved it.
Oh, and yes, this is a play about ghosts; most people know there is a ghost in this house, but there are also the "ghosts" of family and national history that must be known and contended with.
We liked the 1995 version, and enjoyed the play, focusing our discussion for a time on the actual ghost and the "ghosts" of family and American history in the play. It's a stripped down version of the play, whereas the 2024 version appears to be an expansion.
3/26/24, Original review:
Doaker: Berniece ain't gonna sell that piano.
Boy Willie: If Bernice don't want to sell that piano. . . I'm gonna cut it in half and go on and sell my half.
The Piano Lesson (1990) is the fourth play in August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle/Decalogue, with a play for each decade of the twentieth century, focused on the history of the country seen through the lens of black families/history. The legacy of slavery, the Great Migration, Jim Crow as fundamental backdrop for the action taking place in one space on the stage. And in The Piano Lesson we are focused on one family struggling with how to preserve family/cultural history and/or how to move on.
The piano is the iconic centerpiece of the play, about which its various possible meanings is discussed. Thus, Wilson shares a kind of historical “lesson” that his characters are using to work through their family struggles. That piano is (actually) carved into/inscribed with family history, and Berniece Charles wants to preserve it as a kind of legacy; she’s sees its value as cultural artifact, as family and black history. Her brother, Boy Willie, just returned from Mississippi with a truckload of watermelons to sell that may or may not have been stolen, wanting to also sell the family piano he co-owns with his sister so he can buy a farm and no longer have to work for the white man. He’s talking about the piano having another kind of value--material, or monetary--value. He reminds me a bit of Walter in Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun: You gotta make money, the only thing that really matters, the only “legacy” you want to hang on to if you grew up poor in a racial and class caste system. Symbolism is fine, but you gotta eat!
Avery, a preacher and elevator operator in a rich white man's building, wants to marry Berniece, who’s raising a child alone, while still mourning the loss of her husband. Can she move on, herself? All the men want her to marry Avery, but she questions their (sexist) motives:
“You trying to tell me a woman can’t be nothing without a man. But you alright, huh? You can just walk out of here without me - without a woman – and still be a man. That’s alright. Ain’t nobody gonna ask you, ‘Avery, who you got to love you?’ That’s alright for you. But everybody gonna be worried about Berniece. ‘How Berniece gonna take care of herself? How she gonna raise that child without a man? Wonder what she do with herself. How she gonna live like that?’”
But they all face hurdles in life; Avery sees it this way:
“Everybody got stones in their passway. You got to step over them or walk around them. You picking them up and carrying them with you. All you got to do is set them down by the side of the road. You ain’t got to carry them with you.”
Berniece used to play the piano, until her mother died; she is teaching her daughter to play it. There’s a jazz piano player in the story, and so yes, the piano gets played. Music, food, family, friends, history, matter. But as with other plays by Wilson, the center of the play is the rich dialogue, stories that create the foundation of family and friendship, infused with humor and anguish. This play was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and is just flat out electric theater. I’d seen a production once, but finally read it and loved it.
Oh, and yes, this is a play about ghosts; most people know there is a ghost in this house, but there are also the "ghosts" of family and national history that must be known and contended with.
July 20, 2019
EXCELLENT!
"Berniece ain't gonna sell that piano.".
Set in Pittsburgh, this haunted story of the history behind and conflict over a 137 year old ornately carved upright piano has everything I love in a drama. Unforgettable characters with animated humorous voices, the presence of a determined spirited visitor, and a storyline that takes the reader places you didn't expect to go into the past.
"Berniece ain't gonna sell that piano."
How in the world did a 350 pound man fall down his well? How did Crawley really lose his life? Read THE PIANO LESSON and find out about the horror of The Ghosts of Yellow Dog, about Boy Willie who is always up to something, and about a precious family legacy.
"Berniece ain't gonna sell that piano."
Highly Recommend this 1990 Pulitzer Prize Winner finalist!
May 29, 2013
Because what follows is too long and not really a review (which is particularly terrible given that I'm reviewing a playwright whose brilliant brevity would make Hemingway envious), I'll start with this (which I do not say lightly): The Piano Lesson should be on everyone's personal required reading list.
The Piano Lesson was my first foray into Wilson, and the only one I've been lucky enough to see performed (twice, both brilliantly, once in Washington DC and once at Yale Rep). Wilson is a master of writing the crescendo and climax, and he knows how to close out his acts. It is a difficult comparison, but an argument can be made that he does it best here. It is a puzzle of a play that builds into a thundering cacophony that cuts away, finally (in the play and in the characters' long and bloody family history) to peace, redemption, grace, vindication. It does with silence what Ma Rainey does with its opposite at its end: it uses sound (or its absence) to shock. Reading this play again, my heart pounded again. A testament to the performances I saw, but also a testament to the enduring authority of Wilson's own voice.
At the center of the play is the family's piano, the source of pride and despair for Berniece and Boy Willie's family, and a potential source of hope. As always, Wilson weaves together a range of characters, related by blood, friendship, and shared history. None of this is given to us directly. I mentioned before that The Piano Lesson is a puzzle. The progression of the play depends as much on the characters' history and the history of their ancestors and the white men and women who owned/compelled them, as it does on what the characters do from the opening act onward. As you read, each piece falls into place, one by one. Berniece's relationship with Boy Willie, for example, crystalizes. And piece by piece, Wilson builds the world of what 1936 meant for a poor African-American family. Through deft detail, he clashed the hope of the era (Berniece's demands of her daughter, the piano lessons, homework, hair care; Boy Willie's sale of watermelons and plans to buy land, Lymon's purchase of the suit) with its ugliness (Boy Willie and Lymon's stint at the prison/work camp of Parchman Farm) with the enduring legacy of the past, defined by slavery and violent suppression that culminated in the characters' physical haunting by Sutter's Ghost.
In The Piano Lesson it finally (and belatedly) hit me that Wilson isn't unfurling only the story of a single century. The stories span more than that, and the past is ever rearing itself in the present. Esther was nearly 300 when she first appeared in these plays. Herald Loomis' visions included the bones of dead slaves rising up out of the Atlantic. In the Piano Lesson, not only does the living memory of slavery (a mere 2 generations prior) weigh heavily on the characters, and not only are the characters shaped by more recent history (the theft of the piano, the death of Crowley), but they also are literally haunted by ghosts of the past: the Ghosts of Yellow Dog (black men murdered when white men set fire to a train car), the ghost of Sutter (a descendant of the man who owned Berniece and Boy Willie's ancestors). And, in the end, Berniece is able to call upon the spirits of her own ancestors in their battle against Sutter's Ghost. Wilson collides the past with the present, perhaps here more than any other play, and in so doing writes a play that tells a larger history than even his century.
Berniece became one of my favorite of Wilson's characters. She's one of the first of his women characters to take shot not only at the racial discrimination they face and fight, but to root herself not only in her gender, but in the particular discrimination she has faced as a woman. Her fight with Avery is particularly poignant, as she struggles to gain acknowledgement for her own individuality, herself as a person without a man to be defined with and by. Her fight for individuality is not only with Avery, of course, but also with the constraints placed on her by the burdens of her past: Crawley's death, her parents' and grandparents' suffering. Throughout the play, Berniece and Boy Willie struggle to carve a path that honors that suffering but also honors their own suffering and survival. The interplay of what was taken from them, and what they've taken for themselves, and what they refuse to give up and why, is a central conflict of the story, and gives Berniece and Boy Willie a depth that anchors the story and makes the supernatural element all the more powerfully realistic.
The Piano Lesson does what Wilson does best: it tells an intensely intimate story that somehow also massive in scope. His characters are not everymen. They are unique and powerful and individual, but somehow still able to convey to us an era, a place, a culture, our country's history, raw and tarnished as it is.
Apologies for anyone who read this all the way through. Its too long. What can I say? I could think about The Piano Lesson forever. And also: I really love this play.
The Piano Lesson was my first foray into Wilson, and the only one I've been lucky enough to see performed (twice, both brilliantly, once in Washington DC and once at Yale Rep). Wilson is a master of writing the crescendo and climax, and he knows how to close out his acts. It is a difficult comparison, but an argument can be made that he does it best here. It is a puzzle of a play that builds into a thundering cacophony that cuts away, finally (in the play and in the characters' long and bloody family history) to peace, redemption, grace, vindication. It does with silence what Ma Rainey does with its opposite at its end: it uses sound (or its absence) to shock. Reading this play again, my heart pounded again. A testament to the performances I saw, but also a testament to the enduring authority of Wilson's own voice.
At the center of the play is the family's piano, the source of pride and despair for Berniece and Boy Willie's family, and a potential source of hope. As always, Wilson weaves together a range of characters, related by blood, friendship, and shared history. None of this is given to us directly. I mentioned before that The Piano Lesson is a puzzle. The progression of the play depends as much on the characters' history and the history of their ancestors and the white men and women who owned/compelled them, as it does on what the characters do from the opening act onward. As you read, each piece falls into place, one by one. Berniece's relationship with Boy Willie, for example, crystalizes. And piece by piece, Wilson builds the world of what 1936 meant for a poor African-American family. Through deft detail, he clashed the hope of the era (Berniece's demands of her daughter, the piano lessons, homework, hair care; Boy Willie's sale of watermelons and plans to buy land, Lymon's purchase of the suit) with its ugliness (Boy Willie and Lymon's stint at the prison/work camp of Parchman Farm) with the enduring legacy of the past, defined by slavery and violent suppression that culminated in the characters' physical haunting by Sutter's Ghost.
In The Piano Lesson it finally (and belatedly) hit me that Wilson isn't unfurling only the story of a single century. The stories span more than that, and the past is ever rearing itself in the present. Esther was nearly 300 when she first appeared in these plays. Herald Loomis' visions included the bones of dead slaves rising up out of the Atlantic. In the Piano Lesson, not only does the living memory of slavery (a mere 2 generations prior) weigh heavily on the characters, and not only are the characters shaped by more recent history (the theft of the piano, the death of Crowley), but they also are literally haunted by ghosts of the past: the Ghosts of Yellow Dog (black men murdered when white men set fire to a train car), the ghost of Sutter (a descendant of the man who owned Berniece and Boy Willie's ancestors). And, in the end, Berniece is able to call upon the spirits of her own ancestors in their battle against Sutter's Ghost. Wilson collides the past with the present, perhaps here more than any other play, and in so doing writes a play that tells a larger history than even his century.
Berniece became one of my favorite of Wilson's characters. She's one of the first of his women characters to take shot not only at the racial discrimination they face and fight, but to root herself not only in her gender, but in the particular discrimination she has faced as a woman. Her fight with Avery is particularly poignant, as she struggles to gain acknowledgement for her own individuality, herself as a person without a man to be defined with and by. Her fight for individuality is not only with Avery, of course, but also with the constraints placed on her by the burdens of her past: Crawley's death, her parents' and grandparents' suffering. Throughout the play, Berniece and Boy Willie struggle to carve a path that honors that suffering but also honors their own suffering and survival. The interplay of what was taken from them, and what they've taken for themselves, and what they refuse to give up and why, is a central conflict of the story, and gives Berniece and Boy Willie a depth that anchors the story and makes the supernatural element all the more powerfully realistic.
The Piano Lesson does what Wilson does best: it tells an intensely intimate story that somehow also massive in scope. His characters are not everymen. They are unique and powerful and individual, but somehow still able to convey to us an era, a place, a culture, our country's history, raw and tarnished as it is.
Apologies for anyone who read this all the way through. Its too long. What can I say? I could think about The Piano Lesson forever. And also: I really love this play.
January 13, 2024
The fourth play in August Wilson’s Century Cycle, The Piano Lesson is loaded — loaded with unforgettable characters, with emotional family tension, and with issues of historical significance. Set in the 1930s in a modest home in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, the play tackles the Great Migration, the legacy of slavery, and the terrors of lynch law and Jim Crow, all through the lens of one divided, extended family.
As always, Wilson captures authentic dialogue, perfectly capturing the voices of his characters. But in making this play a family drama with strong characters in conflict about what to do with the family legacy, he dials up the tension and raises the heat, making this one of his most dramatic plays. Throw in ghost and an absolutely bonkers exorcism at plays climax, and you have one of Wilson’s most memorable plays. Little wonder that it won him his second Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
As always, Wilson captures authentic dialogue, perfectly capturing the voices of his characters. But in making this play a family drama with strong characters in conflict about what to do with the family legacy, he dials up the tension and raises the heat, making this one of his most dramatic plays. Throw in ghost and an absolutely bonkers exorcism at plays climax, and you have one of Wilson’s most memorable plays. Little wonder that it won him his second Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
May 6, 2021
The Piano Lesson is a 1987 play by American playwright August Wilson. It is the fourth play in Wilson's The Pittsburgh Cycle. It was recommended to me by the lovely Yamini.
Wilson began writing this play by playing with the various answers regarding the possibility of “acquir[ing] a sense of self-worth by denying one's past”. However, on finishing his play, Wilson found the ending to stray from the empowered Berniece as well as from the question regarding self-worth. What The Piano Lesson finally seems to ask is: “What do you do with your legacy, and how do you best put it to use?”
Set in 1936 Pittsburgh during the aftermath of the Great Depression, The Piano Lesson follows the lives of the Charles family in the Doaker Charles household and an heirloom, the family piano. The play focuses on the arguments between a brother and a sister who have different ideas on what to do with the piano. The brother, Boy Willie, is a sharecropper who wants to sell the piano to buy the land (Sutter's land) where his ancestors toiled as slaves. The sister, Berniece, remains emphatic about keeping the piano, which shows the carved faces of their great-grandfather's wife and son during the days of their enslavement.
Generations earlier, Sutter, their family's slave-owner, broke up a family by selling a mother and child to pay for the piano which he bought for his wife as an anniversary present. The wife was happy with the piano but missed having the slaves (…white people, I tell you…), so Sutter had that family's husband/father (who was a carpenter and too valuable to sell), carve their likenesses on the piano. He carved likenesses of his entire history on the piano. In 1911, Boy Willie's father stole the piano from the Sutters; in retaliation he was killed. Willie declares that these are stories of the past and that the piano should now be put to good use.
Unable to understand the importance of keeping one's legacy around one to understand and grow from it, Boy Willie only concerns himself with labels and capital. In the last scene of the book, after Berniece calls to the ancestors, Boy Willie finally understands that there is no escape from living his ancestral legacy and the only way to benefit from it is to learn from it. Berniece symbolizes the guardian of her ancestors' past. She remains the only member of the family to adamantly demand the keepsake of the piano heirloom.
Boy Willie is definitely the more immature, naive and selfish one, but in that regard he kind of reminded me of a young Malcolm X, or the character of Richard in Baldwin's Blues For Mister Charlie, or even Walter Younger from Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. A man who is so fed up with the boundaries that a racist society and fucked up system set for him that he only sees one way to break out of it: money. He genuinely wants to better his life situation and standard of living, and he doesn't have many means at his disposal, so he turns to the only valuable family heirloom he (partly) owns.
He's a good man at heart. He doesn't want his niece to feel less worthy because "she wasn't born a boy" (something her mother accuses her of in a fury). He calls Berniece out for making her daughter think "she wrong in the world. Like there ain’t no part of it belong to her." But by doing just that, he neglects to acknowledge that everything is easier in theory. He is not the one who has raised Maretha for the last 11 years on his own. He is not the one who has to make sure that there's food on the table, their clothes are washed. It's easy to talk about those things and give advice when you're removed from the situation. Nonetheless, his tender side is able to come through in a few moments of vulnerability:
Similarly, I felt that Berniece remained quite flat throughout the play. I wanted to love her and her empowered feminist speeches, but they remained lifeless and emotionless to me. I attribute it mainly to Wilson's writing style that I just couldn't seem to click with. I think this is one of those plays that is better seen played out on stage than simply read. Due to that, the play couldn't build the right atmosphere for me. It didn't feel like it displayed the 1930s in an authentic way, Wilson didn't quite manage to encapsulate the spirit and the way of talking of the time. I'm curious to know if his other plays of The Pittsburgh Cycle feel more genuine.
August Wilson is by no means a bad playwright and I appreciate what he tried to do with this particular project... but as of right now, I am not overly impressed with him. My heart and mind is still open though.
Wilson began writing this play by playing with the various answers regarding the possibility of “acquir[ing] a sense of self-worth by denying one's past”. However, on finishing his play, Wilson found the ending to stray from the empowered Berniece as well as from the question regarding self-worth. What The Piano Lesson finally seems to ask is: “What do you do with your legacy, and how do you best put it to use?”
Set in 1936 Pittsburgh during the aftermath of the Great Depression, The Piano Lesson follows the lives of the Charles family in the Doaker Charles household and an heirloom, the family piano. The play focuses on the arguments between a brother and a sister who have different ideas on what to do with the piano. The brother, Boy Willie, is a sharecropper who wants to sell the piano to buy the land (Sutter's land) where his ancestors toiled as slaves. The sister, Berniece, remains emphatic about keeping the piano, which shows the carved faces of their great-grandfather's wife and son during the days of their enslavement.
Generations earlier, Sutter, their family's slave-owner, broke up a family by selling a mother and child to pay for the piano which he bought for his wife as an anniversary present. The wife was happy with the piano but missed having the slaves (…white people, I tell you…), so Sutter had that family's husband/father (who was a carpenter and too valuable to sell), carve their likenesses on the piano. He carved likenesses of his entire history on the piano. In 1911, Boy Willie's father stole the piano from the Sutters; in retaliation he was killed. Willie declares that these are stories of the past and that the piano should now be put to good use.
Unable to understand the importance of keeping one's legacy around one to understand and grow from it, Boy Willie only concerns himself with labels and capital. In the last scene of the book, after Berniece calls to the ancestors, Boy Willie finally understands that there is no escape from living his ancestral legacy and the only way to benefit from it is to learn from it. Berniece symbolizes the guardian of her ancestors' past. She remains the only member of the family to adamantly demand the keepsake of the piano heirloom.
DOAKER:Now, that’s how all that got started and that why we say Berniece ain’t gonna sell that piano. Cause her daddy died over it.I chose these quotes to showcase the argumentation/ train of thought that runs through the play. Both sides offer plausible and substantial arguments, albeit it quickly becomes clear that Wilson wants the reader to take Berniece's side. Due to the fact that I couldn't connect to any of the characters it remained easier for me to stay on neutral grounds. I understood both sides and where they were coming from.
…
BOY WILLIE: And he died over giving me that. I ain’t gonna let it sit up there and rot without trying to do something with it.
…
BERNIECE: Money can’t buy what that piano cost. You can’t sell your soul for money.
…
BOY WILLIE: But Doaker say you ain’t touched that piano the whole time it’s been up here. So why you wanna stand in my way? See, you just looking at the sentimental value.
Boy Willie is definitely the more immature, naive and selfish one, but in that regard he kind of reminded me of a young Malcolm X, or the character of Richard in Baldwin's Blues For Mister Charlie, or even Walter Younger from Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. A man who is so fed up with the boundaries that a racist society and fucked up system set for him that he only sees one way to break out of it: money. He genuinely wants to better his life situation and standard of living, and he doesn't have many means at his disposal, so he turns to the only valuable family heirloom he (partly) owns.
He's a good man at heart. He doesn't want his niece to feel less worthy because "she wasn't born a boy" (something her mother accuses her of in a fury). He calls Berniece out for making her daughter think "she wrong in the world. Like there ain’t no part of it belong to her." But by doing just that, he neglects to acknowledge that everything is easier in theory. He is not the one who has raised Maretha for the last 11 years on his own. He is not the one who has to make sure that there's food on the table, their clothes are washed. It's easy to talk about those things and give advice when you're removed from the situation. Nonetheless, his tender side is able to come through in a few moments of vulnerability:
What I want to bring a child into this world for? I ain’t got no advantages to offer nobody.Despite trying to free himself from racial boundaries, despite trying not to give shit about "what the white man says", Boy Willie knows that his options are limited, that his fate is prescribed, that this society he is forced to live in has reserved no space for him, no space for his family, and thus also no space for his would-be kids. I wish this side of his character would've been explored more.
Similarly, I felt that Berniece remained quite flat throughout the play. I wanted to love her and her empowered feminist speeches, but they remained lifeless and emotionless to me. I attribute it mainly to Wilson's writing style that I just couldn't seem to click with. I think this is one of those plays that is better seen played out on stage than simply read. Due to that, the play couldn't build the right atmosphere for me. It didn't feel like it displayed the 1930s in an authentic way, Wilson didn't quite manage to encapsulate the spirit and the way of talking of the time. I'm curious to know if his other plays of The Pittsburgh Cycle feel more genuine.
August Wilson is by no means a bad playwright and I appreciate what he tried to do with this particular project... but as of right now, I am not overly impressed with him. My heart and mind is still open though.
March 23, 2020
Boy Willie: If Bernice don't want to sell that piano. . . I'm gonna cut it in half and go on and sell my half.
The Piano Lesson is the fourth play in August Wilson's ten play Century Cycle about African-American life in the 20th Century. Boy Willie wants to sell a piano that he and his sister, Bernice, inherited. Their ancestor, a slave master craftsman, constructed the piano and carved scenes and people from their family history into the piano legs. Bernice does not want to sell this family treasure. Her brother wishes to buy land in the South to farm, and use the piano to partially fund his dream.
I would love to see this play in the theater. Wilson makes use of ghosts in the play, and it would be interesting to see how it is staged. Throughout the play their family history of slavery also has a haunting presence. The Piano Lesson won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1990.
The Piano Lesson is the fourth play in August Wilson's ten play Century Cycle about African-American life in the 20th Century. Boy Willie wants to sell a piano that he and his sister, Bernice, inherited. Their ancestor, a slave master craftsman, constructed the piano and carved scenes and people from their family history into the piano legs. Bernice does not want to sell this family treasure. Her brother wishes to buy land in the South to farm, and use the piano to partially fund his dream.
I would love to see this play in the theater. Wilson makes use of ghosts in the play, and it would be interesting to see how it is staged. Throughout the play their family history of slavery also has a haunting presence. The Piano Lesson won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1990.
February 12, 2021
I really struggled to connect with this fourth play in August Wilson's Century Cycle, a bit of a surprise considering it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1990.
Set in 1936, it tells the story of Berniece, a widow and single mother still grieving the tragic death of her husband several years earlier, and her younger brother "Boy Willie," an energetic, ambitious entrepreneur who returns from the South to show up on the doorstep of their Uncle's Pittsburgh home early one morning.
Boy Willie wants to sell their family piano, whose legs were engraved by an enslaved ancestor with intricate images from their family history, so he can purchase a plot of land and establish himself as a self-sufficient and successful businessman. Berniece, however, refuses to go along with her brother's wishes, stubbornly clinging to the piano as a hard-earned, blood-soaked, priceless family heirloom.
While this sibling battle over the fate of the piano rages on, the home where Berniece lives with her Uncle and daughter also appears to be haunted by the ghost of a recently deceased descendant of the white family who once owned their ancestors as slaves.
I appreciate what Wilson's attempting to do here, and this play does illuminate some dark and difficult debates within the African-American community about how best to incorporate their ancestral Past, including the bitter legacy of slavery, into their Present lives as they struggle to survive and build a better future for themselves and their children (in the late 1930’s).
However, this lacked the intellectual spark or emotional resonance that made Ma Rainey's Black Bottom so memorable and compelling. The characters felt superficial and underdeveloped, more like symbols representing different schools of thought than unique and complex human beings. And the central metaphors of the piano and ghost felt a tad too contrived and heavy-handed for my taste, smashing the reader over the head like those grand pianos falling from the sky in the old cartoons.
This also lacked the crackling wit and comic relief I've come to expect from Wilson's plays. There are occasional flashes of brilliance and humor in the dialogue, but none of that unbridled, contagious joy found in the earlier plays. Everything just felt oddly disjointed and underdeveloped, meandering toward an abrupt ending that felt cheap and unearned.
Set in 1936, it tells the story of Berniece, a widow and single mother still grieving the tragic death of her husband several years earlier, and her younger brother "Boy Willie," an energetic, ambitious entrepreneur who returns from the South to show up on the doorstep of their Uncle's Pittsburgh home early one morning.
Boy Willie wants to sell their family piano, whose legs were engraved by an enslaved ancestor with intricate images from their family history, so he can purchase a plot of land and establish himself as a self-sufficient and successful businessman. Berniece, however, refuses to go along with her brother's wishes, stubbornly clinging to the piano as a hard-earned, blood-soaked, priceless family heirloom.
While this sibling battle over the fate of the piano rages on, the home where Berniece lives with her Uncle and daughter also appears to be haunted by the ghost of a recently deceased descendant of the white family who once owned their ancestors as slaves.
I appreciate what Wilson's attempting to do here, and this play does illuminate some dark and difficult debates within the African-American community about how best to incorporate their ancestral Past, including the bitter legacy of slavery, into their Present lives as they struggle to survive and build a better future for themselves and their children (in the late 1930’s).
However, this lacked the intellectual spark or emotional resonance that made Ma Rainey's Black Bottom so memorable and compelling. The characters felt superficial and underdeveloped, more like symbols representing different schools of thought than unique and complex human beings. And the central metaphors of the piano and ghost felt a tad too contrived and heavy-handed for my taste, smashing the reader over the head like those grand pianos falling from the sky in the old cartoons.
This also lacked the crackling wit and comic relief I've come to expect from Wilson's plays. There are occasional flashes of brilliance and humor in the dialogue, but none of that unbridled, contagious joy found in the earlier plays. Everything just felt oddly disjointed and underdeveloped, meandering toward an abrupt ending that felt cheap and unearned.
December 20, 2023
The fourth of Wilson's century cycle plays, this one is set in 1937. Even though the play is set during the Depression, it portrays little external clues about the time period. The plays involves Boy Willie coming north from Mississippi to Pittsburgh with his friend Lymon. They have arrived at his uncle Doaker's house, where Boy Willie's sister, Berniece also lives, with her daughter, Maretha. Boy Willie and Lymon have come north to sell a truckload of watermelons, but also to see about the family piano.
Berniece no longer plays the piano, but she does have Maretha take lessons on it, and hopes that one day Maretha might become a piano teacher. Boy Willie would like to sell the piano, since he has an opportunity to buy some land down on the farm that he previously worked on. Other characters in the story include Wining Boy, who is Doaker's brother, and has been a musician but now is down on his luck. There is Avery, who is a minister that would like to start his own church, but he also hopes that Berniece would be interested in marrying him. Finally, there is Grace, who takes an interest in Boy Willie after a night on the town.
The backstory about what has happened to the piano in previous generations is a little complex, but it motivates the main conflict in the play. The story is well developed and the characters are interesting. The ending is satisfying, if a little abrupt. My only compliant is some of the side characters, such as Doaker or Avery, could have been developed a little more. Of the four century cycle plays I have now read, this is another strong addition, with it ranking third, slightly behind "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom". "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" is still my favorite, with "Gem of the Ocean" being less interesting to me. "Seven Guitars" is next on the list.
Berniece no longer plays the piano, but she does have Maretha take lessons on it, and hopes that one day Maretha might become a piano teacher. Boy Willie would like to sell the piano, since he has an opportunity to buy some land down on the farm that he previously worked on. Other characters in the story include Wining Boy, who is Doaker's brother, and has been a musician but now is down on his luck. There is Avery, who is a minister that would like to start his own church, but he also hopes that Berniece would be interested in marrying him. Finally, there is Grace, who takes an interest in Boy Willie after a night on the town.
The backstory about what has happened to the piano in previous generations is a little complex, but it motivates the main conflict in the play. The story is well developed and the characters are interesting. The ending is satisfying, if a little abrupt. My only compliant is some of the side characters, such as Doaker or Avery, could have been developed a little more. Of the four century cycle plays I have now read, this is another strong addition, with it ranking third, slightly behind "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom". "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" is still my favorite, with "Gem of the Ocean" being less interesting to me. "Seven Guitars" is next on the list.
August 28, 2014
3.5 Stars
A short and sweet play about a family feud over a family piano. My brother recommended this book to me. My brother is really interested in chemistry, and doesn't like to read; so when he recommends something, I check it out.
The characters are well-developed, and their motivations and desires are well-presented and played out. The introductions were interesting, and the story progressed at a solid pace as the tension slowly increased. By the climax, the passive aggressive behavior of the characters created edge of your seat tension and suspense. I was so excited to see how the ending would play out...
I removed half a star for the ending, which was a huge disappointment. It felt like such a huge cop-out by the author... I feel as if Wilson didn't know how to resolve the conflict between the character's personalities, and threw in something that would solve things without compromising what we knew to be true about the characters. The ending was poignant, but overall, unsatisfying.
The ending was a bummer, but still an enjoyable play(and I don't read plays. EVER.).
A short and sweet play about a family feud over a family piano. My brother recommended this book to me. My brother is really interested in chemistry, and doesn't like to read; so when he recommends something, I check it out.
The characters are well-developed, and their motivations and desires are well-presented and played out. The introductions were interesting, and the story progressed at a solid pace as the tension slowly increased. By the climax, the passive aggressive behavior of the characters created edge of your seat tension and suspense. I was so excited to see how the ending would play out...
I removed half a star for the ending, which was a huge disappointment. It felt like such a huge cop-out by the author... I feel as if Wilson didn't know how to resolve the conflict between the character's personalities, and threw in something that would solve things without compromising what we knew to be true about the characters. The ending was poignant, but overall, unsatisfying.
The ending was a bummer, but still an enjoyable play(and I don't read plays. EVER.).
October 16, 2016
Another Wilson play that was just okay. I wanted to learn more about the piano, but the characters never really get around to explains what exactly is so important and symbolic about the piano that it must be kept within the family. I feel like this would be an amazing play to see onstage since the final scene has so much action and the characters have so much dialogue between themselves that causes for the reader to need to actually see it acted out instead of just reading it in a book.
I will say though, the one dimensional feel that was given to Avery's character (he's the love interest of one of the main characters) felt very robotic when he was simply quoting full passages from the bible just so that he could uphold his role as a "preacher." In a way, this character paled when read in tandem with Boy Willie, who was the main male character that was so impassioned about life.
Overall, my main problem with this play was that Wilson's failed once again to really reconcile the ending with the residing conflict in the play. Like with Gem of the Ocean, the story seemed to stop abruptly and the curtain just seems to fall down in the midst of the characters' squabble making me feel confused as to what the playwright was trying to convey to his audience. Therefore, while I did like this better than Gem of the Ocean, I still had to give it a mere 3 stars because I wasn't all the way sold on how the play ended. Definitely not Wilson's best play, but still worth the read at only a little over a 100 pages.
I will say though, the one dimensional feel that was given to Avery's character (he's the love interest of one of the main characters) felt very robotic when he was simply quoting full passages from the bible just so that he could uphold his role as a "preacher." In a way, this character paled when read in tandem with Boy Willie, who was the main male character that was so impassioned about life.
Overall, my main problem with this play was that Wilson's failed once again to really reconcile the ending with the residing conflict in the play. Like with Gem of the Ocean, the story seemed to stop abruptly and the curtain just seems to fall down in the midst of the characters' squabble making me feel confused as to what the playwright was trying to convey to his audience. Therefore, while I did like this better than Gem of the Ocean, I still had to give it a mere 3 stars because I wasn't all the way sold on how the play ended. Definitely not Wilson's best play, but still worth the read at only a little over a 100 pages.
November 20, 2016
Do we give up on artifacts tied to our history as an investment for the betterment of our future or do we use them as an inspiration to build a better future for ourselves?
The piano becomes focal point that drives the conversation between siblings about civil war, slavery, family history and remembering injustices of the past.
The piano becomes focal point that drives the conversation between siblings about civil war, slavery, family history and remembering injustices of the past.
July 6, 2015
Incredibly simplistic but full of meanings, symbolism, and interesting explorations of double consciousness. Wilson clearly seemed to be very good at what he did. Would love to try more of his plays in the future.
April 27, 2022
So good. Boy Willie is so well written. What a character. This one is a little clunky in parts but hits where it needs to hit.
September 13, 2011
The Piano Lesson is about two siblings fighting over an antique piano that has been with their family ever since it'd been made. I wasn't supposed to know that this play existed, but it turned out I was supposed to read it over the summer.
I've read a lot of books that make no sense or left me thinking, WHAT THE FUDGE? or were simply pointless, but this play was just POINTLESS. A Big-Foot-DOES-Exist kind of pointless (because he doesn't exist, if you get what I mean). Yes, the story was focused on the point, but that is it. It was like the playwright (I am supposed to call him that, right?) dashed like lightning to the point. It mainly talks about this dude and his friend coming from the South to sell watermelons and sell the dude's family antiquated piano to raise money to buy a piece of land where his ancestors worked on during the dark ages of slavery, but his sister's like: NO! but he is too dumb and persistent to understand. That's the point of the story. The playwright then adds random, irrelevant moments and speeches and the entire time I'd been reading I was like: *head lolled back; mouth open; drooling.*
It's a fast read though, if you can stand boring, superfluous books or plays. Terribly stupid and boring as it was, at least it was understandable, unlike Shakespeare's plays (but Shakespearean plays are TOTALLY another thing)
I've read a lot of books that make no sense or left me thinking, WHAT THE FUDGE? or were simply pointless, but this play was just POINTLESS. A Big-Foot-DOES-Exist kind of pointless (because he doesn't exist, if you get what I mean). Yes, the story was focused on the point, but that is it. It was like the playwright (I am supposed to call him that, right?) dashed like lightning to the point. It mainly talks about this dude and his friend coming from the South to sell watermelons and sell the dude's family antiquated piano to raise money to buy a piece of land where his ancestors worked on during the dark ages of slavery, but his sister's like: NO! but he is too dumb and persistent to understand. That's the point of the story. The playwright then adds random, irrelevant moments and speeches and the entire time I'd been reading I was like: *head lolled back; mouth open; drooling.*
It's a fast read though, if you can stand boring, superfluous books or plays. Terribly stupid and boring as it was, at least it was understandable, unlike Shakespeare's plays (but Shakespearean plays are TOTALLY another thing)
October 16, 2017
I'm a Pittsburgher, but even if I weren't, I would declare August Wilson a national treasure.
His cycle of plays covers different decades in the African-American experience in Pittsburgh. The Piano Lesson is set in the 1930s, when many blacks knew people who either had been born into slavery or who could remember slave members of the family, and that forms one of the elements in this gripping saga.
At the heart of the play is a richly carved piano that becomes the subject of a family dispute. It sits in the home of widowed Berniece, who lives in Pittsburgh's Hill District with her daughter and her uncle Doaker, a railroad cook. Unexpectedly, her brother, Boy Willie, and his friend Lymon show up with a truckload of watermelons they have driven up from the deep South. Boy Willie's plan: sell the watermelons, sell the piano and with that money, buy a farm that used to be owned by a white man in Mississippi named Sutter.
Berniece has no intention of selling the piano. She considers it part of her family's legacy, and as Wilson peels away the onion layers of the story, you learn how vividly true that is. The piano was once owned by a white family that had slaves who were part of the Berniece-Boy Willie clan. The piano was acquired by selling two of those slaves, but the white mistress of the household missed her slaves so much that she had another of their relatives carve their images into the piano. The carver didn't stop there, though. He carved the family's entire slave experience into its wood, so that it is a living memorial to their shackled past.
The piano has ended up in Berniece's home because of another tragedy -- its theft by her father, who died in the process.
This sets up the tension in the play, but it's only one of the points of conflict. Another is the open question of how white farmer Sutter happened to fall into his well and die, and his ghost suddenly begins to appear in Berniece's household, an invisible presence who becomes a key part of the story.
Everyone in America should read or see at least one August Wilson play. If you watch Denzell Washington's Fences, you'd be off to a good start. But this play would serve just as well. It is mesmerizing in its own right, but also as a vivid reminder that as a nation, we were built -- we continue to be built -- on the backs of people brought to this nation in chains.
His cycle of plays covers different decades in the African-American experience in Pittsburgh. The Piano Lesson is set in the 1930s, when many blacks knew people who either had been born into slavery or who could remember slave members of the family, and that forms one of the elements in this gripping saga.
At the heart of the play is a richly carved piano that becomes the subject of a family dispute. It sits in the home of widowed Berniece, who lives in Pittsburgh's Hill District with her daughter and her uncle Doaker, a railroad cook. Unexpectedly, her brother, Boy Willie, and his friend Lymon show up with a truckload of watermelons they have driven up from the deep South. Boy Willie's plan: sell the watermelons, sell the piano and with that money, buy a farm that used to be owned by a white man in Mississippi named Sutter.
Berniece has no intention of selling the piano. She considers it part of her family's legacy, and as Wilson peels away the onion layers of the story, you learn how vividly true that is. The piano was once owned by a white family that had slaves who were part of the Berniece-Boy Willie clan. The piano was acquired by selling two of those slaves, but the white mistress of the household missed her slaves so much that she had another of their relatives carve their images into the piano. The carver didn't stop there, though. He carved the family's entire slave experience into its wood, so that it is a living memorial to their shackled past.
The piano has ended up in Berniece's home because of another tragedy -- its theft by her father, who died in the process.
This sets up the tension in the play, but it's only one of the points of conflict. Another is the open question of how white farmer Sutter happened to fall into his well and die, and his ghost suddenly begins to appear in Berniece's household, an invisible presence who becomes a key part of the story.
Everyone in America should read or see at least one August Wilson play. If you watch Denzell Washington's Fences, you'd be off to a good start. But this play would serve just as well. It is mesmerizing in its own right, but also as a vivid reminder that as a nation, we were built -- we continue to be built -- on the backs of people brought to this nation in chains.
July 27, 2016
This was the first play I've read by Wilson, and I was struck by the depth of his characters and the power of his dialogue. His careful attention to the details and nuances of human speech and behavior made the conversations (and the characters) come alive on the page. Occasionally funny, often sad, this drama takes on a seemingly simple conflict that escalates into something much more for the brother and sister on either side of the argument.
October 15, 2016
My second August Wilson play/book and I
Loved it!
To this hometown Pittsburgh girl his plays read just like pure dialogue between people that I may know or have heard. I enjoyed it immensely and have not a negative speck of a word to say against it. I look forward to reading the rest of his play collection and hope to see one live on stage soon.
Winner!
Winner!
April 27, 2009
I am reading this again to prepare to teach it over the summer. I always think I've got this play down, but another read brings me a fresh perspective. It is a great character study, depicting with clarity the struggle between past and present, memory and fulfillment of promise.
April 6, 2017
An old piano is as much a character in this play as any of the characters who speak lines, chase dreams, or resist ghosts in this starkly beautiful drama. Like all but one of the other tens plays in August Wilson’s Century Cycle, The Piano Lesson is set in Pittsburgh. The time is the late 1930s, making it the fourth chronologically in the cycle (fifth in order of composition). I’ve been reading them in chronological order and this one is the most compelling and enjoyable to date (in a stiff competition) though I am still trying to determine how I feel about the ending. But more on that later.
Two adult siblings are the main protagonists. One, the brother, is visiting Pittsburgh from Mississippi. Boy Willie Charles is hoping to buy a farm in the community that his family comes from. The other sibling is the older sister. The piano is in the parlor in the Spartan house that Berniece Charles shares with her uncle. It’s an old piano, once owned by a white family during slavery days. The family that owned the piano also owned the grand- and great grand- parents of Boy Willie and Berniece. What makes the piano particularly interesting, and valuable, is that it has a magnificently carved frame, with the black family’s history sculpted into every inch of the piano. Carved by a Charles ancestor, the images, distinctly African in style, tell the signature events in the family’s history the way Renaissance frescoes in Italian churches depict the signature events in the Old and New Testaments. Berniece who claims ownership by possession will not part with the piano, even though she rarely plays it. (A white dealer in musical instruments is very interested in it.) Boy Willie has come north with a truckload of watermelons to sell. The money from that combined with what he has saved and what he views as his share of the piano will help him buy an available farm in Mississippi.
Boisterous, bawdy, aggressively charming and relentless, Boy Willie (played on Broadway by Charles Dutton but initially by Samuel L. Jackson) will not be persuaded that the piano should just sit idly in the parlor when it could help him build a future. “This might be your bottom but it ain’t mine. I’m living at the top of life. I ain’t gonna just take my life and throw it away at the bottom. I am in the world like everybody else. The way I see it everybody else got to come up a little taste to be where I am.”
Berniece won’t part with this connection to her family’s story in America. “Look at this piano. Look at it. Mama Ola polished this piano with her tears for seventeen years. For seventeen years she rubbed on it till her hands bled. Then she rubbed the blood on it. Every day that God breathed life into her body she rubbed and cleaned and polished and prayed over it.”
That’s the conflict, one that threatens to end in violence. There are other questions as well—how the family came to get possession of the piano, the legend and truth behind the legend of the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog, why Berniece no longer plays the piano, what happened to Sutter, the late owner of the land Boy Willie is looking to buy, who is responsible for the death of Crawley, Berniece’s man, and more. The play is blessed with great secondary characters: Lymon, Boy Willie’s partner, Wining Boy and Doaker Charles, the uncles to Berniece and Boy Willie, Avery, perhaps Berniece’s future husband, and Grace, a young woman who is the romantic interest of Lymon. Wilson expertly builds and complicates the plot with history’s depth and justice’s imperfect claims past to present.
The dialogue is lyrical and powerful, smoothly revealing character and the knottiness of seemingly simple questions. And the ending is either a surprisingly powerful and apt one or an end that jars the perfection of all that has happened up to this point, one that a little too slickly allows Wilson to dodge tragedy. I lean to the former but the latter nagged at me as I closed the book and as I write. Still, worst case scenario, if like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, you can come this close to perfection in a literary work are you going to praise the success or condemn the flaw. The Piano Lesson is damned fine writing with a deeply ambitious story about a family, a race, a country.
Two adult siblings are the main protagonists. One, the brother, is visiting Pittsburgh from Mississippi. Boy Willie Charles is hoping to buy a farm in the community that his family comes from. The other sibling is the older sister. The piano is in the parlor in the Spartan house that Berniece Charles shares with her uncle. It’s an old piano, once owned by a white family during slavery days. The family that owned the piano also owned the grand- and great grand- parents of Boy Willie and Berniece. What makes the piano particularly interesting, and valuable, is that it has a magnificently carved frame, with the black family’s history sculpted into every inch of the piano. Carved by a Charles ancestor, the images, distinctly African in style, tell the signature events in the family’s history the way Renaissance frescoes in Italian churches depict the signature events in the Old and New Testaments. Berniece who claims ownership by possession will not part with the piano, even though she rarely plays it. (A white dealer in musical instruments is very interested in it.) Boy Willie has come north with a truckload of watermelons to sell. The money from that combined with what he has saved and what he views as his share of the piano will help him buy an available farm in Mississippi.
Boisterous, bawdy, aggressively charming and relentless, Boy Willie (played on Broadway by Charles Dutton but initially by Samuel L. Jackson) will not be persuaded that the piano should just sit idly in the parlor when it could help him build a future. “This might be your bottom but it ain’t mine. I’m living at the top of life. I ain’t gonna just take my life and throw it away at the bottom. I am in the world like everybody else. The way I see it everybody else got to come up a little taste to be where I am.”
Berniece won’t part with this connection to her family’s story in America. “Look at this piano. Look at it. Mama Ola polished this piano with her tears for seventeen years. For seventeen years she rubbed on it till her hands bled. Then she rubbed the blood on it. Every day that God breathed life into her body she rubbed and cleaned and polished and prayed over it.”
That’s the conflict, one that threatens to end in violence. There are other questions as well—how the family came to get possession of the piano, the legend and truth behind the legend of the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog, why Berniece no longer plays the piano, what happened to Sutter, the late owner of the land Boy Willie is looking to buy, who is responsible for the death of Crawley, Berniece’s man, and more. The play is blessed with great secondary characters: Lymon, Boy Willie’s partner, Wining Boy and Doaker Charles, the uncles to Berniece and Boy Willie, Avery, perhaps Berniece’s future husband, and Grace, a young woman who is the romantic interest of Lymon. Wilson expertly builds and complicates the plot with history’s depth and justice’s imperfect claims past to present.
The dialogue is lyrical and powerful, smoothly revealing character and the knottiness of seemingly simple questions. And the ending is either a surprisingly powerful and apt one or an end that jars the perfection of all that has happened up to this point, one that a little too slickly allows Wilson to dodge tragedy. I lean to the former but the latter nagged at me as I closed the book and as I write. Still, worst case scenario, if like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, you can come this close to perfection in a literary work are you going to praise the success or condemn the flaw. The Piano Lesson is damned fine writing with a deeply ambitious story about a family, a race, a country.
February 6, 2017
This is a 3.7 starred rating.
I continue my backward trajectory through August Wilson's Century Cycle with The Piano Lesson. If I had to based what I thought this play would be about solely on its title, I probably would have said this would be the most innocuous of his Cycle thus far. I would be wrong; way off the map and with good reason too.
The Piano Lesson takes place in 1936. On its surface, it's about a brother sister conflict. Little brother Boy Willie wants to sell of the family piano so he can buy some land. However, it's in older sister Berniece's possession and she is very adamant about keeping in the family.
At its heart, it's about ghosts, both literally and symbolically. Boy Willie sees selling the piano as a way to a certain kind of freedom. He can finally purchase land he believe is rightfully his and move on with his life. He can finally be "somebody. " Berniece believes the piano is a direct link to her family past and all of the sacrifice it took to bring it to the house. They're both haunted, one by the past and one by a possible future.
Then, they're actually haunted by Sutter, the former slaveowner of their family. He was supposedly pushed into a well by the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog, so named by the four black men who were burned alive in a boxcar of the train called the Yellow Dog. One of those men was Boy Willie and Berniece's father, Boy Charles.
A haunting that's caused by another haunting? Wilson knows how to use allegory and he does it extremely well. I enjoyed The Piano Lesson because it was not what I expected. I enjoyed the bitter family history. I saw where all sides were coming from. I tended to agree more with Berniece. Keeping the piano is not only mere sentimentality; it's palpable history of your roots. It's physical evidence of where you come from. However, I understood Boy Willie's side as well. Sometimes, you don't want to remember where you came from and be static. Sometimes, you need to break out and write a new history.
I continue my backward trajectory through August Wilson's Century Cycle with The Piano Lesson. If I had to based what I thought this play would be about solely on its title, I probably would have said this would be the most innocuous of his Cycle thus far. I would be wrong; way off the map and with good reason too.
The Piano Lesson takes place in 1936. On its surface, it's about a brother sister conflict. Little brother Boy Willie wants to sell of the family piano so he can buy some land. However, it's in older sister Berniece's possession and she is very adamant about keeping in the family.
At its heart, it's about ghosts, both literally and symbolically. Boy Willie sees selling the piano as a way to a certain kind of freedom. He can finally purchase land he believe is rightfully his and move on with his life. He can finally be "somebody. " Berniece believes the piano is a direct link to her family past and all of the sacrifice it took to bring it to the house. They're both haunted, one by the past and one by a possible future.
Then, they're actually haunted by Sutter, the former slaveowner of their family. He was supposedly pushed into a well by the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog, so named by the four black men who were burned alive in a boxcar of the train called the Yellow Dog. One of those men was Boy Willie and Berniece's father, Boy Charles.
A haunting that's caused by another haunting? Wilson knows how to use allegory and he does it extremely well. I enjoyed The Piano Lesson because it was not what I expected. I enjoyed the bitter family history. I saw where all sides were coming from. I tended to agree more with Berniece. Keeping the piano is not only mere sentimentality; it's palpable history of your roots. It's physical evidence of where you come from. However, I understood Boy Willie's side as well. Sometimes, you don't want to remember where you came from and be static. Sometimes, you need to break out and write a new history.
January 2, 2012
I've said this before with plays and I will say it again: they must be watched. There is a film version of The Piano Lesson with Charles Dutton that is really remarkable. I'm not sure if they still perform this, but it will be the first play I mark down to see if it is.
Speaking of the play (and a lot of this comes off far better in the theatrical version), the characters are amazing. The history of the characters and how it has defined them, their loves and their hates, their flaws and their talents, is truly inspiring. A lot of things have been written about how slavery continues on even after its end, but this so remarkably shows a cavalcade of characters responding to it, and not just lamenting about how terrible white people, showing real, living people and how such a thing could help define who they are, that I was blown away.
The story itself encapsulates slavery, loss, and so much more in the item of the piano and how so many lives can swirl around it. The conflicts are remarkable, the passions that the characters battle and love one another with remarkable.
I can't think of any other way of putting it and just to remind that reading it DOES NOT convey everything it is. Dutton inflects Boy Willie so remarkably, all of his strength and pain, that it really should be seen rather than read, but, as with Shakespeare, I understand that different people have different approaches and loves. Either way, this really should be taught far more. It is by far the best thing I've read about this topic.
Speaking of the play (and a lot of this comes off far better in the theatrical version), the characters are amazing. The history of the characters and how it has defined them, their loves and their hates, their flaws and their talents, is truly inspiring. A lot of things have been written about how slavery continues on even after its end, but this so remarkably shows a cavalcade of characters responding to it, and not just lamenting about how terrible white people, showing real, living people and how such a thing could help define who they are, that I was blown away.
The story itself encapsulates slavery, loss, and so much more in the item of the piano and how so many lives can swirl around it. The conflicts are remarkable, the passions that the characters battle and love one another with remarkable.
I can't think of any other way of putting it and just to remind that reading it DOES NOT convey everything it is. Dutton inflects Boy Willie so remarkably, all of his strength and pain, that it really should be seen rather than read, but, as with Shakespeare, I understand that different people have different approaches and loves. Either way, this really should be taught far more. It is by far the best thing I've read about this topic.
November 10, 2014
Wilson’s dialog is superb. The conflict is all too real. The prose is strong, realistic with some poetic smatterings scattered about. Vibrant, with an emotional pull causing the narrative and ensemble to come alive. The building tension creates a suspenseful and plausible ambiance.
The ending adds fuel to the fire, as the climatic finale binds the entire narrative.
The ending adds fuel to the fire, as the climatic finale binds the entire narrative.
July 13, 2019
Truly enjoyable play depicting the great migration from the Deep South to the northern industrial zones, in this case—Pittsburgh. There are meditations on fate, justice and gender hypocrisy. There’s a simmering pain and a ghost who’s as taciturn as the fallen king of Denmark.
January 9, 2023
interesting idea, not great execution
March 17, 2021
Would love to do a comparative study between this book and Toni Morrison's Beloved.
May 1, 2023
Here was my journal entry of sorts, I read this a few days ago and I'm already on to the next, so please excuse the weirdly formal, spoiler-ridden, review:
In August Wilson's fashion, his third play in his 19th-century cycle, titled “The Piano Lesson” delved into the ideas of black trauma, how African-Americans live alongside their ancestors past, with different reactions belonging to various characters throughout his plays. While the storyline remained short, only lasting about a week or so, Wilson was not only able to cleverly intertwine the Charles siblings, Berniece and Boy Willie, with their predecessors but have both characters go through personal growth, challenged by their own strifes, to overcome their struggles with their family’s past and become at peace once more. That is what I loved about this play. Berniece, whose strong connection with her mom and her great-grandmother, Berniece, had compelled her to keep the piano in her household, with its significance and traumas, never to play it out of respect for her dead mother. She’s internalized her family’s trauma, never teaching it to her daughter so that she could remain unscathed. Boy Willie was portrayed quite differently. Staying in the South, working the plantations his family worked, fully engrossed in the bloodied history of his forefathers, Willie held on to his family’s black trauma as it pertained to the Sutter plantation and their family’s years of slavery and forced servitude to the estate. He wants to sell the piano–and all its historical significance–just to be able to own the Sutter plantation, to take back his family’s trauma and in that way, do right by his ancestors. I know I shouldn’t summarize, but these two perspectives were equally unique, and the way Wilson was able to resolve each of their inner conflicts with their family’s history simultaneously, was beautifully done, and earned high respect from me. As Berniece battles her demons by forcing herself to play the piano (to get rid of the actual spirit of Sutter), while Boy Willie physically dealt with the spirit demonstrates the two different outcomes trauma can induce on a passing generation. One’s internalized, more feeling-induced, while the other comes in the forms of physicality and brash decision-making. I loved the juxtaposition between those two characters and how Maretha, Berniece’s daughter, symbolizes the blissful innocence and future without the Black trauma that each of them wrestled with throughout the play. This was miles better than Two Trains Running, another of Wilson’s plays, as the inclusion of powerful women and men makes for a compelling story, with compelling character growth.
In August Wilson's fashion, his third play in his 19th-century cycle, titled “The Piano Lesson” delved into the ideas of black trauma, how African-Americans live alongside their ancestors past, with different reactions belonging to various characters throughout his plays. While the storyline remained short, only lasting about a week or so, Wilson was not only able to cleverly intertwine the Charles siblings, Berniece and Boy Willie, with their predecessors but have both characters go through personal growth, challenged by their own strifes, to overcome their struggles with their family’s past and become at peace once more. That is what I loved about this play. Berniece, whose strong connection with her mom and her great-grandmother, Berniece, had compelled her to keep the piano in her household, with its significance and traumas, never to play it out of respect for her dead mother. She’s internalized her family’s trauma, never teaching it to her daughter so that she could remain unscathed. Boy Willie was portrayed quite differently. Staying in the South, working the plantations his family worked, fully engrossed in the bloodied history of his forefathers, Willie held on to his family’s black trauma as it pertained to the Sutter plantation and their family’s years of slavery and forced servitude to the estate. He wants to sell the piano–and all its historical significance–just to be able to own the Sutter plantation, to take back his family’s trauma and in that way, do right by his ancestors. I know I shouldn’t summarize, but these two perspectives were equally unique, and the way Wilson was able to resolve each of their inner conflicts with their family’s history simultaneously, was beautifully done, and earned high respect from me. As Berniece battles her demons by forcing herself to play the piano (to get rid of the actual spirit of Sutter), while Boy Willie physically dealt with the spirit demonstrates the two different outcomes trauma can induce on a passing generation. One’s internalized, more feeling-induced, while the other comes in the forms of physicality and brash decision-making. I loved the juxtaposition between those two characters and how Maretha, Berniece’s daughter, symbolizes the blissful innocence and future without the Black trauma that each of them wrestled with throughout the play. This was miles better than Two Trains Running, another of Wilson’s plays, as the inclusion of powerful women and men makes for a compelling story, with compelling character growth.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 7, 2017
I have seen this play performed and it was very powerful. I wanted to read the play and experience it again and found it just as compelling as the performance. The play revolves around a piano owned by a brother and sister that contains carvings depicting their family history. It becomes a point of serious contention as the sister wants to keep it and the brother wants to sell it. The real lesson of the piano is the conflict between preserving the history of an African-American family that all too often didn't have any tangible pieces of history during slave times, and giving up that history in order to have the money for a new future. Remembering or forging ahead? Which is more important? This is a great play which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1990.
March 18, 2015
Have I talked about how natural the dialogue is in these plays? I know Wilson wrote a lot in bars, listening to the talk all around him, but this is a skill far exceeding just the ability to pull from reality. I love how Boy Willie clearly talks first and thinks later, just easily slipping stretches of the truth here and there to always bolster his point. Even for things that don't even matter. We've all known people like that who will just casually drop, "Lymon got tired" or something like that in front of Lymon and when Lymon can get a word in to say that he didn't say he was tired, Boy Willie is on to the next point. It's really masterful, the amount of detail that goes into these character portrayals.
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