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    A Study Guide for August Wilson's The Piano Lesson
    A Study Guide for August Wilson's The Piano Lesson
    A Study Guide for August Wilson's The Piano Lesson
    Ebook44 pages43 minutes

    A Study Guide for August Wilson's The Piano Lesson

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 8, 2015
    ISBN9781535838863
    A Study Guide for August Wilson's The Piano Lesson

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      A Study Guide for August Wilson's The Piano Lesson - Gale

      4

      The Piano Lesson

      August Wilson

      1987

      Introduction

      The Piano Lesson is the fourth of August Wilson’s cycle of plays about the African American experience in the twentieth century. It opened at the Yale Repertory Theater in 1987, and, later, on Broadway, to great success.

      The play was inspired by Romare Bearden’s painting Piano Lesson. It is set in Pittsburgh in 1936 and focuses upon the relationship between the Charles siblings, Berniece and Boy Willie, who clash over whether or not their family’s piano should be sold. In the mid- nineteenth century, when the Charles family were slaves, two members of the family were sold by their owners, the Sutters, for a piano. Subsequently, a master-carpenter in the Charles family was ordered by the Sutters to carve the faces of the sold slaves into the piano. He did that and more: he carved the family’s entire history into the piano. The instrument was later stolen by Berniece and Boy Willie’s father, who was then killed by the Sutters in retribution.

      The play explores African Americans’ relationship to family history, particularly to the history of their slave ancestors. While Wilson’s cycle of plays is set during the twentieth century, all of his plays explore the legacy of slavery and the roots of American racism—this play is as concerned with the Ante-bellum period as it is with America during the Great Depression.

      Wilson presents the Charles’ different attitudes towards their family history in a naturalistic style: the dialogue accurately reflects everyday dialect, and the action is interwoven with scenes of people preparing meals, hot-combing hair, and bathing. The play’s central metaphor, the piano, dominates this structure, while Wilson’s inclusion of ghosts and spirits demonstrates his diverse cultural and literary influences. Although a few critics were critical of his mixing of styles and traditions, the majority applauded his imaginative fusion of African, American, and African-American traditions.

      The Piano Lesson won Wilson his second Pulitzer Prize and confirmed his status as one of America’s most important and innovative living playwrights.

      Author Biography

      Wilson was born Frederick August Kittel in 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He grew up in a racially diverse working class neighborhood, the Hill, where he lived with his mother and five siblings. His mother, a single parent, worked as a domestic to support her six children. Her own mother, Wilson’s grandmother, had walked from North Carolina to Pittsburgh in search of better opportunities. Wilson’s mother remarried when he was still young, and the family moved to a white suburb. Wilson met persistent racism in the schools he attended there, and at fifteen he was frustrated enough by this prejudice to leave school and educate himself at the local

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