During the remainder of the 1960s, Wilson continued to write and was instrumental in founding two organizations that promoted black American writing: the Center Avenue Poets Theatre Workshop, formed in 1965, and the Black Horizon Theatre, formed in 1968 which he co-founded in the Hill District of Pittsburgh along with his friend, Rob Penny, a playwright and teacher, in an effort to politicize black Americans and to increase their race consciousness. Wilson's earliest plays were written for Black Horizons, including: Recycling, written in 1973 and produced at a Pittsburgh community theater. His first play, Recycling, which drew on the unhappy dissolution of his first marriage, was performed for audiences in small theaters and .
To find the voice that would make him famous as a playwright, Wilson needed to gain distance from his roots. "Having moved from Pittsburgh to St. Paul, I felt I could hear voices for the first time accurately," he told the New York Times. This opportunity came in 1978 when he visited his friend Claude Purdy in St. Paul, Minnesota, and decided to stay there, on the suggestion of Purdy. Purdy urged Wilson to write a play and Wilson felt more ready than ever before. Wilson concentrated more on playwriting and became a company member of the Penumbra Theatre. In ten days of writing, Wilson finished a draft of Jitney, a play set in a gypsy-cab station. In 1979, Wilson wrote “Jitney,” which he considered his first real play. Wilson won a $200-a-month fellowship at the Minneapolis Playwrights Center in 1980, and the following year, he married for the second time to Judy Oliver.
Wilson's most famous plays are (1985) (which won a and a ). It is set in the 1950s, and it is the sixth in the cycle. It deals with issues of race and relations, recounting the story of a former star athlete who forbids his son from following his path and accepting an athletic scholarship. (1989) which is my focus (a and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award), (1982) is set in the1920s in Chicago, and is concerned with a black blue singer who takes advantage of a group of musicians in a recording studio, (1984) a play that deals with a time in American history when the sons and daughters of the newly or recently freed slaves journeyed to the North in search of prosperity, and is set in the 1910s. Seven Guitars(1995) is set in the1940s, and recounts the story of seven characters, and it begins after the funeral of one of them. It is Wilson’s homage to the Blues guitarist Floyd Barton, Two Trains Running (1990) set in the 1960s, it takes place in an known as the in , in . It explores the social and psychological manifestations of changing attitudes toward race from the perspective of urban blacks, and Jitney (1983) a play in two acts, and is set in a worn-down gypsy cab station in Pennsylvania.
This 10-play cycle is covering every decade of the 20th century America and chronicling the black experience in that century, and all but one – “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” is set in Chicago– are set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, where Wilson spent his youth and early adulthood, that is why the cycle id dubbed "Pittsburgh cycle".
Each play is notable in itself, as Evans Everett says "for Wilson's trademark strengths of rich characters, musical language, earthy comedy, deep pathos" (Everett). The Pittsburgh cycle is considered one of American theater's greatest achievements; as
Wilson's ambitious and multi-award-winning cycle chronicles the African-American experience throughout the 20th century, with one play set in each decade. Though Wilson did not create the plays in chronological order, he did write the final, 1990s installment (Radio Golf) last — completing revisions just weeks before he died of cancer at age 60, in October 2005. (Everett).
While Wilson did not write his plays chronologically, yet "in reading the plays in sequence — experiencing the connections, recurring themes and evolving social milieu —" (Everett), the one realizes the scope of Wilson's aptness and accomplishment. In this unprecedented series, Wilson opened new avenues for Black artists, changed the way theater approaches race and changed the business of theater, too. As Christopher Rawson maintains, “In dramatizing the glory, anger, promise and frustration of being black in America, [August Wilson] created a world of imagination" (Rawson), and made of Pittsburgh's Hill District a famous paragon and portrayed it as" the archetypal northern urban black neighborhood, a construct of frustration, nostalgia, anger and dream" (Rawson). He assumed the role of a tribal griot whose duty it was to preserve the legacy and history of his culture. The role of the griot is significant since it is with him we mark the beginning of African literary tradition as we know it.
The Piano Lesson (1989) is Wilson’s drama of the 1930s. it won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for drama, the New York Drama Critics Cycle Award, The Tony Award for best play, The Drama Desk Award, and The American Theatre Critics Outstanding Play Award. The Piano Lesson was a painting by Romare Bearden of the same name, and Wilson was inspired to write it after seeing the painting in an art gallery. It examines a family conflict over a heirloom built by a slave ancestor. This play maybe the best in expressing Wilson’s views of black history as something to be neither sold nor denied, but employed to create an ongoing identity.
The story revolves around the Charles family as they encounter both the challenges of the present and struggle to come to terms with the grief and suffering of their family’s past. The play is set in1936, with all the action taking place in the house of Doaker Charles, the uncle of Bernice and Boy Willie, between whom the conflict happens. The play concerns a brother and a sister arguing about whether they should sell their family piano. Boy Willie, a from the , wants to sell his family's ancestral piano to buy land. His sister Berniece insists on keeping it. The piano has the carved faces of their great-grandfather's wife and son who were sold in exchange for the piano during the days of enslavement. The play opens when Boy Willie and his friend Lymon knock at the door of his uncle Doaker Charles. Willie has not seen his sister berniece for three years, and she is living with her uncle, for he has been serving a sentence on the Parchman Prison Farm. Willie intends to sell the family piano and use the money to buy Sutter's land, the land his ancestors once worked as slaves. Doaker, however, is sure Berniece will not part with . Indeed, Brown—a preacher who has been courting Berniece since her husband Crawley died—has already tried to get her to sell it. Willie schemes to get in touch with the prospective buyer himself.
The piano is the family’s heirloom, and it is carved with images of their African ancestors. During slavery, a man named Robert Sutter owned the Charles family. He once wanted to buy a piano as a gift for his wife, but he could not afford it, so he traded Doaker’s grandmother Berniece and his father for the instrument. Sutter’s wife initially loved the piano, but later came to miss her slaves and fall desperately ill. So, Sutter asked Doaker’s grandfather to crave the faces of his wife and child into the piano. Willie Boy craved his family immediately and included his mother, father and various scenes from the family’s history. Years after years, Berniece and Willie’s father Boy Charles, developed an obsession over the piano, believing that as long as the Sutters held it, they held the family in bondage. Thus, on July 4, 1911, he, Doaker, and Wining Boy stole it. Later that day, lynchers set Boy Charles's house on fire. He fled to catch the Yellow Dog, but the mob stopped the train and set his boxcar on fire. Boy Charles died along with the hobos in his car, all of whom became the ghosts of the railroad.
Willie and Lymon attempt to move the piano. Berniece enters and commands Willie to stop, since the piano is their legacy. Berniece invokes the of their mother, who attended to the piano until the day she died. She attacks Boy Willie for perpetuating the endless theft and murder in their family, blaming him for the death of her husband. Suddenly, , Berniece's daughter, is heard screaming upstairs in terror, as Sutter's ghost has appeared again. Later that evening, Avery enters and proposes to Berniece anew. Berniece asks Avery to bless the house in hopes of exorcising Sutter's ghost. Avery suggests that she use the piano at his church. Berniece replies that she leaves the piano untouched to keep from waking its spirits. Willie enters and they argue anew and Willie invokes the memory of his father, arguing that he only plans to do as he might have done. Willie and Lymon begin to move the piano. Berniece exits and reappears with Crawley's gun. Avery moves to bless the piano. Boy Willie intercedes, taunting Sutter as Avery attempts his exorcism. He charges up the stairs, and an unseen force drives him back. He charges back up, and then engages with Sutter in a life-and-death struggle. Suddenly, Berniece realizes what she must do and begins to play the piano. "I want you to help me," she sings, naming her ancestors. A calm comes over the house. Willie reappears and asks Wining Boy is he is ready to catch the train back south. Willie says goodbye to his sister, and Berniece gives thanks.
The Great Depression serves as the historical backdrop to the play as well as black migration from the South to the North. Such migration increased steadily until stabilizing in the 1930s and creating new black communities. The play raises issues of legacy, history, history’s representation and memory as the primary sources of conflict. It is an allegory for how African-Americans must learn to negotiate their history. It is written in a moment when Wilson became concerned with what he identified as the “foreign” representations of African American experience that dominated the mass media of the 1980s. His counter-representations of history call to represent African-American history in “non-foreign” fashion.
Throughout the play the piano is a central symbol that embodies the family’s legacy with its deep-rooted meanings and connections to the past. It is also a source of conflict between the two siblings, Berniece an Boy Willie, as they argue about how best to use the piano. Berniece wants to maintain the piano as it is their legacy and heritage , while Willie wants to sell it to buy the land that his ancestors worked as slaves. The piano evolve from a symbol of conflict and divisiveness within the family to one of a unifier and healer that unites the family’s past and present.
The piano is linked with the trauma of slavery being purchased by Robert Sutter in exchange for two of his slaves who are ancestors of Willie and Berniece. The piano is also associated with suffering , and this is clear when Berniece recalls a memory of her mother who polished the piano with her tears. Thus the piano is a source of grief and hardship, however, it becomes a symbol of unity in the final scene when Avery was exorcising the ghost of Sutter.
The piano’s value lies in its symbolism and not in its material existence. Initially dividing the siblings, as Abraham G. Berhane maintains “The piano initially represents the conflict and suffering that define much of the Charles family’s history of enslavement” (Berhane). Yet finally helped them find common grounds when Berniece and Boy Willie reconcile their differences in the final scene. While the piano emerges out of the trauma of slavery, it comes to symbolize unity and a family’s legacy. It is the incarnation of the family’s history. It exemplifies the interchangeability of person and object under the system of slavery. As Berhane says “the nature of the transaction reinforced the objectification of slaves – equating their value to that of an inanimate object”. Carved to placate Miss Ophelia, the wooden figures indicate the interchangeability between slave and ornamentation for white masters.
According to Sonya L. Wilson, The Piano Lesson “ has a lot to teach us about honoring our heritage and having the courage to move forward”. In contrast to Berniece’s wish, Boy Willie wants to sell the piano for , in his own viewpoint, it is no longer useful and of no avail. He wants to exploit its price along with that of the watermelons and buy the land which could be more useful to them. On the other hand Berniece values the piano as a legacy and heritage that should not be tampered with and that must be maintained for ever. But after a series of supernatural events of exorcism both of the siblings learned a lesson. Berniece learned “the importance honoring the past and using that past to strengthen you for the present and the future”(Wilson, Sonya L). Also Boy Willie learned “that your heritage is not something that you take lightly and sell to the highest bidder”.
So throughout the play a certain message is echoing with August Wilson’s ideas. This message perpetuates the motto of appreciating heritage and of being loyal to the one’s history and culture and be proud of it. Sonya L. Wilson again claims that “The Piano Lesson has a lot to teach us about the African American experience. Our history is rich and varied. When we know where we come from, it is up to us to take that knowledge of our history and use it to enrich our lives”.
Michael Downing thinks that Wilson’s play carries both didactic and mythological features, and that “by blending the twin features of didacticism and the supernatural, Wilson has written a play that is both morally instructive and mythologically revealing” (Mythological Conversions in The Piano Lesson). He also suggests that the piano itself “functions as a repository for the history of the Charles family and, by extension, functions as a repository for the spiritual history of all Africans living in America”.
Mr. Wilson's plays present this world as a crucible in which the identity of black America has been shaped. Black Americans have their own history, culture, and heritage. That is why they could develop their own identity and self-assertion. They have undergone certain experiences that helped shape their identities and personalities that, to a great extent, differ from White-Americans in all aspects. Jay Plum suggests that "Wilson's dramaturgy challenges the secondary position of African Americans within American history by contextualizing black cultural experiences" (Plum), and in turn he creates an opportunity for the black community to examine its history and heritage and to fend for itself.
Intelligently, August Wilson rights American history through his cycle. He upholds that Afro-American person has his own history, legacy, symbolized by the piano in The Piano Lesson, and ideology that make him different and distinct. It is not only his color that distinguishes him from white-Americans. He encourages his fellows to adhere to their own history and past, as Berniece did, for when the one forgets his past he will have neither present nor future. Don Adams thinks that "The memory of slavery, conscious or buried, marks much of Wilson's work”. And he goes further and emphasizes his view by quoting August Wilson’s words; “ ‘Blacks in America want to forget about slavery,' he once said. 'The stigma, the shame. But if you can't be who you are, who can you be? How can you know what to do?' "(Adams).
In his doctoral dissertation, Downing suggests that Wilson in his Pittsburgh cycle of plays "was creating a representative history of the 20th Century for a people with a 'dream deferred' " (Restoring the Myths), and that Wilson was consciously or unconsciously creating a mythology of his people through converting the pejorative racist stereotypes into holy and sacred archetypes all through his plays. Downing thinks that Wilson's mythology was "a mythology that provided a new system where blacks can flourish and grow in their own way, according to their own rhythms, their own beliefs, and their own language. It's part music, part history, and part fable. It's a sociology lesson and a celebration" (Restoring the Myths). So, the thesis of Michael Downing's dissertation is that Wilson's technique followed a certain pattern in which he "would consistently take negative, racist stereotypes and turn them into something sacred", without being ashamed of them, or belittling them. So, instead of ignoring the role of such stereotypes within the African American experience and culture, "Wilson celebrates them and gives them value as part of the social fabric and history".
As Wilson's Pittsburgh cycle offers a quasi-chronological account of the Afro-American experience throughout the twentieth-century, so the cycle is offering a glimpse of the history, heritage, and culture of all Afro-Americans. Throughout this cycle- this Afro-American epic story- the one conjures remembrances and events from the past. "Mr. Wilson's American epic looks back to slavery and forward to a full equality that glimmers in the distance", and in his cycle Wilson " deals also with the waves of fresh black migration from the agrarian South to the industrial North" (Rawson). Also there are characters in most of the plays who embody and represent "that legacy of past suffering and hard-won wisdom" (Rawson).
By his cycle Wilson portrays the history of his fellow Afro-Americans. Thus the American history is related form the viewpoint of an Afro-American perceiver, and from the perspective of an insider. And as Wilson is one of the group, then his account maybe more accurate than that related through the lens of a White-American perceiver, as he is an heir to the very experiences he recounts. He also thinks, in Adamou Bissiri’s words that "blacks can best write and stage their experiences and cultural identity" (Bissiri). History, as Jay Plum defines is theoretically " an open-ended discourse that does not constitute reality but provides a meaning, or an interpretation, of past events by an objective observer" (Plum). Hence, Wilson could be more objective than any other White-American.
American history, for example, historians (the majority of whom have been white male Protestants) have valorized white male settlers and marginalized women and people of color. As such, American history tends to be the story of religious men willed by God to tame a savage land devoid of humans and human institutions. Whereas Puritan and Pilgrim settlers (and their descendants) function as subjects in this narrative, marginalized groups such as African Americans play supporting roles. (Plum)
August Wilson in his essay “The Ground on Which I Stand” thinks that "those who would deny black Americans their culture would also deny them their history and the inherent values that are a part of all human life (Wilson). Wilson also thinks that black Americans have equal abilities and faculties that enable them to work and meet on common ground with white-Americans. They are fellow human beings, endowed with the same abilities and can do the same work. The only difference is that both cannot meet on a common ground of experience, as the African-Americans were prone to "the horrifics of lynching", and the "deck of a slave ship with its refreshments of air and expanse". But eventually, Wilson is not in favor of denying history, he says" we will not be denied our history" (Wilson). And assures that the commonalities black Americans share with white ones are that of culture and not history or experience.
Wilson also defends the blues which has an Afro-American origin. He thinks that it is a form of music that distinguishes Afro-Americans and is created by them. For him "the blues are the African American community's cultural response to the world; they are a music "that breathes and touches. That connects. That is in itself a way of being separate and distinct from any another" (Plum). He also thinks that the blues are a connective force that "links the past with the present, and the present with the future" (Plum). So Wilson assures the originality of the blues by African-American, and that it is an example of their distinctive abilities and different heritage, history, and culture.
Wilson's plays do not demonstrate only the tensions between Africans and white-Americans, but they clearly demonstrate the tensions between blacks as well," blacks who want to hold onto their African heritage and those who want to break away from it" (Black History; August Wilson). Being faced with injustices and prejudices, African-Americans became aggressive to each other instead of being aggressive to others. Wilson dramatizes these tensions in his plays and " has devoted his career to dramatizing these tensions within the black community even while he upholds the dignity of the individuals who struggle with their past" (Black History). This dilemma is clear in his play Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, in which he "the character Levee stabs a fellow musician who unintentionally stepped on his shoe, instead of attacking the white man who had stolen his music" (Black History).so violence became internal.
To conclude, Wilson wants Afro-American to stick to their history and culture and not to forget their heritage, as in The Piano Lesson, where "the piano" symbolizes the African-American heritage and history, and there is an obvious tension between the sister who is in favor of maintaining it (history and heritage), and her brother who wants to do without it (history and heritage). In that sense the brother will lead a life without history, without past, and thus without identity. All through his plays Wilson links African-American past with present, reminds Africans with their history and culture, and asks them to recognize their distinctiveness and be proud of their heritage.
As drama is a means through which the playwright could express his/her own viewpoints, and as drama, using Amadou Bissiri’s words “ is a vehicle for cultural expression and validation of cultural identity is expounded" (Bissiri), Wilson's attempt to create a cycle of plays which chronicles the Afro-American history of the twentieth-century decade by decade succeeded in expressing his standpoints and also succeeded in their vindication. Wilson has dedicated his cycle to fend for Afro-Americans, and to relate their history objectively, and " in order to play out his individual sense of commitment to the cause of black America - which is to allow black men and women to tell American history, a history that, so far, whites have mostly told" (Bissiri).
His recurrent message to the Afro-Americans instigates them to have self-assurance and self-confidence, and to be proud of their history and culture, and to stick to it firmly. He assures that they are not sub-humans. They have abilities and faculties which are equivalent to the white-Americans, yet they have not the same culture or history, that is why they have different ideologies and identities. His only aims at the recognition of his Afro-American identity, so that both Americans can co-exist.
He seeks …- acceptance of the fact that Afro-American mythology is not "strange," but "a common, natural part of life"; he seeks acknowledgment of African Americans' link to Africa. Wilson obviously denies the assumption that slavery exterminated African culture. Despite the long and painful historical separation, there remains an African sensibility among African Americans. Wilson consciously seeks to integrate this sensibility and all else that stems from African culture into his plays. (Bissiri).
The Pulitzer prize-winning playwright August Wilson was influenced by many writers, Amiri Baraka was one of them. He likes to say his work is inspired by the four Bs: Writers Amiri Baraka and Jorge Luis Borges, painter Romare Bearden who inspired Wilson to write The Piano Lesson after seeing his painting, and the blues. At the age of sixty, Wilson died of liver cancer that was inoperable; leaving a rich legacy of plays that is regarded as a spokesman of the Afro-Americans forever. He aptly managed to fend for his people through the Pittsburgh cycle of plays, and to prove that they have their own distinctive heritage and culture that distinguishes them from white-Americans, so as not make them like sheep that follow the flock. They have their own African identity of which they should be proud. So August Wilson was a true and objective chronicler of the African-American history.
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