The Piano Lesson

Presented by:Veronika Barajas

Kelly Dewey

Rachel Dugas

Tiffany Harbrecht

Cody Lee

AUGUST WILSON- (1945-2005)

August WilsonAugust Wilson Born on April 27, 1945 as Frederick August

Kittel, in Pittsburgh, PA; son of Frederick August who was a baker and Daisy Kittel; a cleaning woman (maiden name, Wilson). He spent most of his childhood in poverty where he lived with his parents and five siblings. At the age of sixteen, Wilson was discouraged by the racist treatment he endured while in various schools and decided to drop out. Soon after, Wilson began educating himself in the local library, where he discovered most of his most memorable work. On October 2, 2005, August Wilson died leaving behind a legacy that we can pass on from generation to generation.

AchievementsAchievements Pulitzer Prize winner of American Playwright,

Drama Desk Outstanding New Play Award, New York Drama Critics Circle Best Play Award, Antoinette Perry Award for Best Play, American Theatre Critics Outstanding Play Award, and Pulitzer Prize for drama, all 1990, all for The Piano Lesson.

Plays Done by August WilsonPlays Done by August Wilson

*JitneyJitney (two-act play), first produced in Pittsburgh, PA, 1982.

*Ma Rainey's Black Bottom*Ma Rainey's Black Bottom play; first produced in New Haven, CT, 1984.

* Fences* Fences (play; first produced at Yale Repertory Theatre, 1985.

*Joe Turner's Come and Gone*Joe Turner's Come and Gone play; first produced at Yale Repertory Theatre, 1986.

*The Piano Lesson*The Piano Lesson (play; first produced in New Haven at the Yale Repertory Theatre, 1987.

*August Wilson: Three Plays*August Wilson: Three Plays (contains Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Fences, and Joe Turner's Come and Gone), 1991.* Two Trains Running* Two Trains Running (first produced at Yale Repertory Theatre, 1990.

*Seven Guitars*Seven Guitars first produced in Chicago at Goodman Theatre, 1995.* The Piano Lesson* The Piano Lesson (teleplay; adapted from his play), "Hallmark Hall of Fame," CBS-TV, 1995.

Arthur of the plays:The HomecomingThe Homecoming, 1979, The Coldest Day of the YearThe Coldest Day of the Year, 1979, Fullerton StreetFullerton Street,1980, Black Bart and Black Bart and the Sacred Hills the Sacred Hills, 1981, and The Mill Hand's Lunch BucketThe Mill Hand's Lunch Bucket, 1983.

Author of the book:

for a stage musical about jazz musician Jelly Roll MortonJelly Roll Morton. Work represented in A Game of Passion: The A Game of Passion: The NFL Literary CompanionNFL Literary Companion, Turner, 1994, Selected from Contemporary American Plays, 1990, and The The Poetry of Black AmericaPoetry of Black America, including Black LinesBlack Lines and Connection.and Connection.

Main Character- Boy Willie

Charles S. Dutton *Born on January 30, 1951 in Baltimore, Maryland

In the story: *Boy Willie plays Berniece's 30 year old impulsive, and

fast-talking brother, introduces the central conflict of the play. Coming from Mississippi, he plans to sell the family piano and buy the land his ancestors once worked as slaves. By selling the piano, he avenges his father, Boy Charles, who spent his life property-less.

Main Character- Berniece

Alfre Woodard *Born on November 8, 1952 in Tulsa, Oklahoma

In the story: *Berniece plays the 35 year old sister of Boy Willie, and still in mourning for her husband, Crawley. She blames her brother for her husband's death, and refuses to sell the family

piano and believes that the Charles' legacy is incarnated by the piano, an artifact and record of the family's history under slavery.

Other Characters

Lymon  Boy Willie's 29 year friend of many years and quite straightforward. Lymon plans seems to be an

outsider, but is a good listerner to family stories of the past, while he seduces Berniece- bringing her out of her mourning for her dead husband.

Wining Boy A wandering, washed-up recording star who drifts in and out of his brother Doaker's household

whenever he finds himself broke. Wining Boy is one of the most memorable characters of the play. A comic figure, he functions as one of the play's primary storytellers, recounting anecdotes from his travels. Wining Boy provides a connection to the family's history, and the other character in the play who speaks with the dead, conversing with the Ghosts of Yellow Dog and calling to his dead wife, Cleotha.

Doaker Charles

Berniece and Boy Willie's uncle and the 47 year old owner of the household in which the play takes place. Doaker is tall and thin and spent his life working for the railroad. He functions as the play's testifier, recounting the piano's history. Like Wining Boy, the other member of the family's oldest living generation, Doaker offers a connection to the family's past through his stories.

Maretha- Berniece's eleven-year-old daughter, who is practicing to play the piano. Maretha symbolizes the

next generation of the Charles' family, providing the occasion for a number of confrontations on what the family should do with its legacy.

Avery Brown   A preacher who is trying to build his congregation and attempts to date Berniece. The 38 years old

preacher is honest, ambitious and fervently religious as he brings Christian authority to bear in the exorcism of Sutter's ghost.

The “Piano Lesson” and the “Haunting” Past

The “piano lesson” is to remember and identify/ re-identify oneself with knowledge of your past, your family history, and culture and to align that with your goals, hopes, and dreams for the future and a better life. The Piano Lesson also symbolizes a representation/ interpretation of African Americans’ struggle with cultural identity and history in our society in general.

Berniece wants to keep the lid shut on the past, not even telling her daughter about the piano’s story of their family’s past. Ironically, Berniece is immobilized by the past also, not allowing herself to truly love or be loved. Boy Willie is more accepting of how the past cannot be changed, but he too is haunted by ghosts of it. His ghosts are more about status and identity. Like his father, Willie Boy, he feels that they are doomed to be stuck in slavery to the whites without land and the means to make something their own. He knows that there is no fundamental difference between himself and the white man, beyond skin color and structures of power (law). He is therefore driven to symbolically wage war on the past by claiming new life in buying the land his father slaved upon.

Berniece and the Significance of Grace

Lymon describes Grace: “She real nice. Laugh a lot. Lot of fun to be with. She don’t be trying to put on” (Act 2, Sc 3, p. 76). Through Lymon, the audience can make a connection between the type of woman Grace is portrayed as and who Berniece could be if she opened herself and loosened up. As he and Berniece carry on a conversation about his plans for the future and what he’s looking for in a woman, Lymon is able to draw her out of her shell. She advises him, “She out there somewhere. You just got to get yourself ready to meet her. That’s what I’m trying to do” (Act 2, Sc 3, p. 78).

It’s as though Lymon has held a mirror up for her to really see her reflection as an attractive woman, not “closed up” the way Avery put it. Berniece also seems to be convincing herself that she could be ready to move past the memory of her dead husband. Lymon makes a move, but after a brief embrace, she runs away again—not quite ready yet. It is therefore not a coincidence that when Grace reappears later in the play, she is with Lymon, not Boy Willie. Opposite of Berniece, Grace is ready to be with him. She simultaneously symbolizes the need to be open to the potential opportunities of the future—a central theme in the play.

Supernatural Intersects with Spirituality

The spirit world and religious beliefs coincide in The Piano Lesson. The family is comfortable with the idea that spirits of ancestors and other dead inhabit this world as well as the other side. For example, the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog avenge wrongdoing against their own. They are also called on for advice. Wining Boy makes reference to his own pilgrimage to the railroad tracks of the Yellow Dog when he was going through tough times. All the spirits in this play share a commonality in the way they ignite people to actions. God and Christianity also play a large role. Avery has a prophetic dream in which God calls him to become a Reverend and start a church. Several references are made to passages from the Bible by him and Boy Willie. Avery even attempts to exorcise Sutter’s ghost from the Charles house, calling on the power of God and the Holy Spirit to do so. He believes strongly in the presence of the spirit world as proof that, “God works in mysterious ways,” (Act 2, Sc 2, p. 69). At the same time, Avery’s opinion is that God empowers us to do his will, as demonstrated by his attempt to convince Berniece to give her piano to his church and free herself from it as a link to the past by claiming it “an instrument of Lord” (p.71).

Music’s Critical Role:Music is very important to the Charles family. It helps them to deal with the chaos of life. Many times when tension ensues, someone busts out with a song and/ or plays the piano. Wining boy is the “official” musician in the family, but he laments on the pressure he’s felt because of his talent. He says: “The world is just slipping by me and I’m walking around with the piano” (Act 1, Sc 3, p. 41).

He’s had a lifelong love/ hate relationship with music, “But that’s all you got…All you know how to do is play the piano,” (p. 41). It leads him to question himself, “Now who am I? Am I me? Or am I the piano player?” (p.41). In actuality, he is both because they are one in the same, and he knows this. He would not be able to correctly identify himself without music or the piano, as would any of the members of this family. The instrument and its “joyful noise” have kept their cultural and ancestral history alive.

Family, Tradition and Beliefs

What does the piano represent? The piano represents history struggle, slavery, and freedom for this family. For example the

legs on the piano are art carved in the manner of African sculpture, are mask-like figures resembling family members that died. The history these carvings represent about the slavery that their family went through and how they get their freedom. The Charles' legacy is incarnated by the piano, an artifact and record of the family's history under slavery.

Who’s Right? Bernice wants to keep the piano because this was very sacred and important to her mother.

Her mother would get the strength and faith through this piano when it was played my Bernice. This piano was cleaned, cried on, and even bleed on by her mother because it represented history, struggle, and freedom.

Boy Willie wants to sell it because he feels that his dad got killed for this piano and wants to make his dad’s dream come true. By selling this piano he can buy his own land and farm on it, instead of working for a Whiteman’s land. This represents freedom for him and the family to own their own land. He also feels that if this piano was so sacred and important why not use it to give piano lessons and make some money to keep it alive. The piano lesson was family unity, faith, forgiveness, and living life. There is no right or wrong in this situation, both parties (Berniece and Boy Willie) have symbolic reasons for selling/not selling the piano. Accepting the past in order to move on with the future and to have peace within your self.

The Piano Lesson: “Symbolic Meaning”

137- year old pianoexchanged for slaves; Known as a system of

slavery

Past on from generation

to generation

Hand-carved figurinesthat tells a story of family ancestors

Inter-changeable Nature of slave andOrnament for the

Master

References:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~awilson/bio.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Wilson

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~awilson/bio.html

Wilson, August. The Piano Lesson. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1990.