Penumbra

Lessons of Legacy

Doaker Charles' home in Pittsburgh is situated at a figurative crossroads, a boarding house for friends and family on their journeys. Boy Willie raucously arrives early one morning, up from the farmland of Mississippi, with a dream for a brighter future and a plan to actualize his goals. Wining Boy passes through on his way back down south, pausing to remember the exploits of his younger days and the people that shaped him. Avery stops by on his way to a successful career as a preacher.

Ghosts of the past even walk through and whisper in this place. Amidst all of this coming and going the house's inhabitants, Doaker, Berniece, and Maretha must recalibrate their sense of self and direction – a challenging task for a migratory people.

At the center of the crossroads and the controversy lies the piano, symbolically holding in tension the pull of each direction – the legacy of the past in the south and the allure of the future in the north, the desire for rootedness and the longing for freedom, the value of money and the worth of the soul. In this house they stand, as Wining Boy did, at the place where the Southern railroad crosses the Yellow Dog, fighting fiercely to go in the direction they see best. Each of them wants their presence to be significant, their journey to have meaning. As Boy Willie says, "I got to mark my passing on the road. Just like you write on a tree, 'Boy Willie was here.'"

Wilson's characters aren't the only ones hoping to mark out their presence.

As this production of The Piano Lesson opens, so too does Penumbra's five year Wilson Lab project. With this program Penumbra follows in the footsteps of its namesake, laying down the legacy of the African American experience as told through Wilson's 10-play cycle chronicling the 20th century, and as uniquely embodied on the Penumbra stage. August definitively called out "we are here," fleshing out the recent past in these plays, allowing us to see complex African American characters in all of their nuance, fault, glory, and humanness. Penumbra is responding, not only by staging all ten plays over the next five years, but also by documenting the process, gathering the stories of the original company members, and sharing it all with the young people that will shape Penumbra's future.

Stephanie Lein Walseth,
August Wilson Fellow

Search: