Cast & Crew Roundtable: August Wilson
On April 14, I sat down with the cast of The Piano Lesson in Court Theatre’s rehearsal hall to discuss their experiences with August Wilson, this play, and Wilson’s legacy to performers, directors, and spectators. What ensued was a lively conversation full of memories and laughter—and vivid stories about the master playwright of Pittsburgh. The cast that director Ron OJ Parson has assembled at Court Theatre has a wide range of experiences and history with Wilson and his Century Cycle—the ten plays that Wilson wrote to document the African American experience in the 20th century. This ensemble is composed of some first time Wilson actors, and some who have been in nearly all of the Century Cycle canonical works. What follows are excerpts from our conversation.
-Kate Bredeson
KATE BREDESON (Dramaturg): I’d love to hear about each of your first experiences with August Wilson, as actors, students, audience—however you first encountered him.
RON OJ PARSON (Director): Ma Rainey was my first experience. I heard about the play from [Charles S.] Dutton. I was a friend of his at the time before the play was produced, and through him I met August. And then I had the opportunity to do Ma Rainey in the early 90s; I played Levee and directed it at the same time. So that was a really odd and overwhelming experience.
A.C. SMITH (Doaker): My first experience with August Wilson was The Piano Lesson. I was in New York doing another show, and I got asked to audition for The Piano Lesson. I had no idea what it was, or who August was. And a year to that day, they called me back, flew me in to New York to audition. And I was cast, and that was for the Broadway tour of The Piano Lesson. I did that for a year, and got to meet August’s family. It was directed by Lloyd Richards who did the original Raisin in the Sun.
KATE: And you played Boy Willie?
A.C.: Yeah. And after I came back from that tour, about a year later, I got back to Chicago and they were doing it here. I walked in, read a few lines, they said “thank you.” Before I got home, I was cast as Boy Willie again in Chicago, and I did it, like, four other times after that. And then I got too old to do Boy Willie. I still think I got one Boy left in me, but (Laughter)—I really do! But I’ve played Doaker since.
RON OJ: It’s funny when actors get old they always think they got one more in them. They got some—I’ve seen some 50-year-old Walter Lees. They’ve got one more!
A.C.: And I’ve done all of August’s shows except Ma Rainey and Seven Guitars.
KATE: Oh!
RON OJ: And Ron [Conner] has come up kind of being mentored by you at Saint Louis Black Rep, and now he’s doing Boy Willie under your Doaker. So I think that’s a great thing, too.
KATE: So this play’s really been a part of your acting career.
A.C.: All of us, actually. But I’ve done this one—I did all of this work [on Boy Willie] ‘til I was 30. Then I got too old, as they say, and I had to graduate to the uncles!
RON OJ: I was talking to an actor last night who’s currently in the production of Magnolia with Tyla at Goodman, and he was telling me that Roscoe Lee Brown—[this actor] did Joe Turner’s Come and Gone as a kid—And Roscoe Lee Brown told him, “one day, August Wilson’s going to put food on your table, he’s gonna feed your family,” and that is really what’s happening with a lot of us, you know, cause August Wilson has put a lot of people to work. It’s just a blessing.
A.C.: I’ve done many different shows, different roles, all over the place. Same show, different roles. New show every time. It’s like Shakespeare.
KATE: Have any of the rest of you had the experience of playing the younger role and then later, in the same play, the parent figure to the child?
RONALD CONNER (Boy Willie): No, we’re not that old yet.
ALEXIS ROGERS (Grace): No, I’m just a baby.
KATE: Sorry!
(Laughter)
BRIAN WEDDINGTON (Lymon): You know what, my first experience with August Wilson was actually on the other side of the stage, watching. And working behind the scenes, in New Brunswick at Rutgers. They did The Piano Lesson, actually. I have a hard copy of Fences, an autographed copy that I’m hoarding. It’s locked up in the vault on the West Side. (Laughter) But, you know, he’s always been—at school, you know, he was the Mecca. You wanted to do an August Wilson piece. You had to do it. But man, this is my first time being on stage in an August Wilson play in my career. I’m the virgin. Well, let’s say the newbie. (Laughter)
A.C.: Fresh meat!
RON OJ: It’s great to be doing one with these people in Chicago.
BRIAN: To be doing it in Chicago, to go on a journey, with actors that I know respect—trust. It’s a blessing. When I got the script, I was reading it, and I had chills, when the whole spiritual thing came up I was like, “Oh no, I can’t believe this.”
RON OJ: That’s what I’m hoping happens. We were just talking—me and Nick [Keenan, Sound Designer] and Keith [Pitts, Scenic Designer]— about that sequence at the end there. I think that what we want to do is to—the chills that we get doing it, we want the audience to feel that. Alfred, you go way back with August, too.
ALFRED WILSON (Wining Boy): Yeah. I was doing marketing at the Goodman when I first met him—I wasn’t acting at that time. And Ron and I have a story: We were riding from Goodman down to the DuSable museum, and he was talking about writing Gem of the Ocean, I think it was. He was talking about writing that, and he was telling us how stories come to him. I was talking to someone the other day about writing—she wants to be a writer, and I was telling her how August Wilson told us he writes, and he said he was just waiting and waiting and then he hears this voice, and the voice starts talking, and he writes it down, and somebody else walks in and he’d write that, you know, call and response. Somebody said something, somebody else came in and said something. It was Seven Guitars, that’s right, because he said he didn’t know why this woman came in—he kept hearing this woman’s voice while he was writing. It was supposed to be a play about men, and he kept hearing this woman’s voice. So finally he just said, “Well, I guess she got something to say.” And he started writing her. And then the first play I did was Two Trains Running. I want to play Memphis again.
RON OJ: When you do August Wilson, you want to do it again.
A.C.: Yeah, cause you never—You don’t get it all the first time.
ALFRED: You never do.
KATE: How many of them have you directed, Ron?
RON OJ: I’ve been in or directed seven of them. Seven Guitars and King Hedley and Two Trains Running I haven’t done. I did a couple of them two or three times. I’m finally gonna get an opportunity to do Two Trains Running in the 2010 season at another theatre, so I’m really looking forward to that. I don’t know who Memphis is yet.
(Laughter)
ALFRED: My ears perked up.
RON OJ: But it is that type of thing where, once you do one or two, you want to do the entire cycle. And I think that that legacy that he left by doing that—When we were talking about wanting to act in plays, being an African American actor, it used to be Raisin in the Sun. “I want to do Walter Lee!” You know?
RONALD: Yes.
RON OJ: Want to do Mama Lena if I’m that age. But now we got a cycle of plays with all these characters. And there are other plays by other playwrights that get listened to and read now because of August Wilson.
TYLA ABERCRUMBIE (Berniece): Well, that’s a wonderfully loaded question, “What is your first experience with August Wilson?” My first exposure was just reading it: I read plays that I may not have an opportunity, at that time to be performing or auditioning for. But I love to read good plays. And I read Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. And I thought it was poetic and unbelievable, and I loved that his characters seemed to jump up off the page, and be people that you knew in your family, or they felt like uncles, or cousins, or the guys you heard sit around talking—at least, you know, in my neighborhood where I grew up. So that was great, and I was like, “Man, this guy is a fantastic writer.”
And then, I had the wonderful good fortune of working on my first August Wilson play with Ron in Jitney at Saint Louis Black Rep. And it was not only that, it was also my first exposure to Equity. That put me on the road to being a professional actor. So he moved my career into another level just by doing his work. And then with Piano Lesson, they’re absolutely right, you do it once and you’re just like, “I want to do it again.” So, being able to do Berniece in Portland, and now getting to do it at home in Chicago is wonderful. When Congo Square did it here before there was no auditioning for it whatsoever because they were using their own company members. I was sick about it. So it’s really great to be doing it at home.
RON OJ: I directed that one, too.
(Laughter)
TYLA: Seeing that show was the first, I should say first and only, time that I actually met August. It was just a brief hello, nothing more than that. No wonderful stories like you guys, but it was still a great experience.
RON OJ: August was on the advisory board at Congo Square. He really supported Congo Square. So he came to that production and sat there. He loved it. It was a boost in my career (this was over ten years ago). And so meeting him there—I met him in ’83, but it was like we were both, you know, nobody really knew who I was, and so it took me about five times to meet him, where he said, “Yeah, yeah I remember you, from, you know, somewhere.”
A.C.: It took me maybe ten meetings before he remembered my name!
RON OJ: Exactly. And after he saw that Piano Lesson, he said “Oh, yeah. Now I remember you!” He really liked that one and it was a good production. Congo Square was very new then, too. I think it was their first production. It was really great.
ALEXIS: I’ll chime in on them since I’m an ensemble member with Congo Square. Being that August was so near and dear to Derek’s heart—the Artistic Director of Congo Square—he always talked about August, he was so passionate about August. So, when I first moved back home in ’04 I got affiliated with Congo Square—I knew Derek from Howard University. And the first play I did in Chicago was Seven Guitars, and I played Rudy. And I said, “Ooh, I just wished I could have met this man, cause he pinned me on this paper, this little sassy girl up here for me to play,” I say, “he done talked to my mamma, now.”
RON OJ: That was the first time I saw you, too.
ALEXIS: Yeah, you know, playing Ruth in my little red dress. Here I am in a red dress again! And the language was so awesome, and then the actors are awesome over there—I was in awe. I was so proud of the play, like I knew him or something. So that’s my first experience, and this is my second. So, I’m real excited; another sassy character, here she go!
RON OJ: I think it does make you feel like you know him when you hit it right, and you hit the language and the poetry of it. Ron, what about you?
RONALD: My first experience was in college. We didn’t even do the whole play. My director—the director of the theatre department—she used August as a way to gauge your growth in the theatre program, and you could only do August after you’d reached a certain level of training. For every other play we would have auditions, and the roles would even be double cast because she always felt it was an educational experience. But this, there were no auditions for Wilson’s People. She had to pick you to be in the play, and that’s how you knew you were doing something special. And so August was already on this pedestal. Wilson’s People was excerpts from all his plays, the whole ten play canon. So I got sides, I didn’t even get a play. But the first side I got was Harold Loomis from Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. But she tried to gives us roles that, you know, she thought we would play later on in life. And I just remember reading it and it read like Shakespeare, but I didn’t need a lexicon. Who are these people talking like— like Tyla said—like my uncles? So I read the play and then I was hooked. I was hooked from Seth’s first line. And then I met him. We did Wilson’s People down at this National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta. And that’s when I met August Wilson. And so we’re all college students, eager, and we rush up to him, “Oh, so, what advice would you give actors?” And he very calmly looked at us and said, “Just say my words.” (Laughter) First play I got to do all the way through then, was Joe Turner, with A.C. Where I was, uh, 55 pounds ago. That was fun—learned how to play the guitar a little bit.
A.C.” And the washboard.
RONALD: And the washboard! Oh, but I knew I could play the washboard… Then I just did Gem of the Ocean. I’ve done three. Joe Turner, Gem of the Ocean—which was great, cause Gem of the Ocean and Joe Turner are right next to each other in the cycle. I just did Gem with Alfred and AC. And Ron! Keeping me employed.
RON OJ: Allen, what what about you?
ALLEN EDGE (Avery): Like Tyla, my first experience was reading it. It was for an audition
RON OJ: Oh, you read the play when you were auditioning?
ALLEN: The entire play, yeah.
RON OJ: Lot of actors don’t do that!
ALLEN: It’s a radical concept. I had heard so much about August Wilson, so I said “I really want to know what’s the big deal.” My theatre career started in Chicago around ’74. And a lot of black plays were really blatant—just slavery, Ku Klux Klan, the white man. There wasn’t much nuance. And so when you read August Wilson, you see some of the subtleties of everyday life, and it’s about racism, but it’s also real life. And there’s the language, the craft of the way he writes. I saw in Gem of the Ocean, he said, “I couldn’t be free, and my people still in slavery.” And that’s now, with people moving out to the suburbs, forgetting about the inner city black folk. So all these giant issues and truths that he deals with make it such a pleasure to tell the stories. And it’s easier to get into them now that I’m 50 years old—I can be the dramaturg, I could have written this myself.
TYLA: You know what was really awesome is when we did Radio Golf—we being Ron, Alfred and myself—we just did that in Pittsburgh. And so to actually be in a place that you—you read all his plays and except for two of them they’re about Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh. And then to actually be there, and be in the Hill District, and know what you’re talking about when he makes references to the Hill and what it’s like, and the Settlement House, and things like that. Even just rereading the play, and thinking about dropping Maretha off at the Settlement House—I’ve been by there now. So it really was wonderful to be in his hometown and see this place that helped form these characters.
RON OJ: Yeah, we went to a Jitney station.
TYLA: We went to a Jitney station! And it was so Jitney. It was the Jitney station. We took pictures like tourists cause it was so the real Jitney station. But anyway, that was a really wonderful experience, when there’s a writer that’s been really influential in your career, and a place that meant a lot to him, and then you actually visit that place. It must have been wonderful to have met him, and to have these great stories to tell, but I felt that just going to the place that—
ALFRED: Well, it helps to hear his voice that much clearer.
TYLA: It does. It was really amazing! It was really amazing.
ALFRED: We talked to a lot of people that knew him, met his family, went by his sister’s house, went by the house where he wrote Seven Guitars. The yard that he was talking about in Seven Guitars. And that was pretty moving.
TYLA: It was really chilling. And to hear people tell stories about him. Which is so funny—there was this wonderful story told about the restaurant where these guys cook—they cooked, but they didn’t like cooking. And they didn’t even want to own a restaurant. But people loved their cooking, so they would come there to get this food, and they never put a restaurant sign on the door, and that’s where August would go to write. There was never a sign on the door, where it was, but everybody knew about this place. And they reference this great chicken in Gem of the Ocean.
ALFRED: They say when he was a young boy, I mean when he left high school—he quit, I guess—they would always see him with a pad. Nobody knew what he was writing, he was just always writing something.
RON OJ: Right! He was the weird kid writing all the time.
ALFRED: Just this little weird boy. I can’t remember—I keep trying to think of the nicknames they called him—
TYLA: I can’t either!
ALFRED: But he had strange nicknames. Cause all they ever saw him doing was walking around with this pad and pencil.
RON OJ: There’s a good picture Congo Square took and put it on a t-shirt. And, even though it’s just a silhouette, you can tell it’s him with his pen, cause he still wrote longhand. In factm when we did The Piano Lesson, they had a ceremony, and they gave him this pen, and he said, “This is what I’m gonna use from now on,” and he wrote Radio Golf with the pen that Congo Square gave him.
The other thing about being in Pittsburgh was, you could feel the Steelers.
TYLA: Oh my god, that is so true!
RON OJ: It always surprises me how many people don’t know August Wilson. Even over in the office building here at Court, I was trying to get some people from another department to come see Wait Until Dark, and one lady said “Oh do you have a lunchtime matinee that we can come see during our lunch hour?” I said, “No, ma’am, it’s a full-length show.” Then I told them about The Piano Lesson we were getting to do, and I said, “You know, it’s by August Wilson.” “Oh, that name—that name sounds familiar.”
ALLEN: You’re right because people have asked me what I’m doing—and I say the name, and I have this expectancy of recognition to come over their faces and it doesn’t happen, like “August Wilson?” No. Still no.
RON OJ: So that’s interesting, that he’s so warm and familiar to us, but the general public outside the theater world, they don’t realize.
KATE: This is the second one we’ve done at Court, right?
RON OJ: Yeah, we did Fences. And now this one. And in between we did The First Breeze of Summer, which is a classic by Leslie Lee. And we did Flyin’ West by Pearl Cleage who—talking to her is very similar to August in terms of how she writes, hearing the voices. She told me a story once that she was driving alone, and she heard a character talking so close to her that she had to pull off the road because she thought somebody was in her back seat. But yeah, this is our second one, and then we’re opening next season with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. So hopefully in my time here we’ll do all ten of them.
KATE: All ten! Well, we want to be the national center for classic theatre, so it seems such a natural—
RON OJ: Exactly.
TYLA: You know what else is great about Court doing Fences and doing Piano Lesson, and is that it’s in Hyde Park. How long has Court been around before it actually started doing African American plays? It’s so nice to have this play on the South Side because you don’t get a lot of plays—there’s tons of theatres to go to on the North Side. But you don’t really get them on the South Side. So I hope that word gets out, and that we get not only the Hyde Park community but South Siders.
RON OJ: The same way we talk about ,“If you’re in it, you want to do it again,” I think a lot of our audience says the same thing. “Oh, I saw Piano Lesson, but I’m coming again, I’m coming to see this one,” or, “I saw Fences.” When we did Fences there were a lot of people that saw the original James Earl Jones version, and said, “Yeah, well I had to come back to see it again.” Sometimes you direct a play, and it opens and then you’re gone, and you probably don’t see it anymore. With August’s plays, though I want to come back and watch them again just to see the audience, or see how the actors are growing within the characters.
So, talking to our young performers, to be able to be in an August Wilson play at such a young age, if you continue in this career, you will be able to go on—I was talking to an actor last night, who was a young man doing Joe Turner and now he’s a grown man still doing it. Because when you’re young, and you experience this it has an effect on you. So I appreciate our young performers being involved here.
KATE: Is this your first August Wilson play, both of you?
CHINA GRAY (Maretha): Yeah.
ALETTIE SMITH (Maretha): Yeah.
RON OJ: Did you know who August Wilson was?
ALETTIE: No! When my mom found out, she was like, “August Wilson! Oh my god!” (Laughter) And then I told my best friend and she was like, “So, uh, are you ever gonna do The Color Purple?” (Laughter)
RON OJ: But when your friends come to see it hopefully they will know what we mean, and you guys will know what we mean when we finish this, after all this talkin’ we’re doing about it.
TYLA: When we did it in Portland, it was so wonderful to watch the young ladies that played Maretha grow within the play, because they start off with—you’re around all these grown folks, and we talking like we’ve been doing it for years, and some of us have. And so maybe there’s this degree of uncertainty, but then, as they got used to seeing what was happening, and being actors on stage, they would just react to everything. And it turned round that we ended up watching them because they did such honest work, and we’d talk afterwards, like “Did you see her? She was crying!” We’re just as impressed with young performers as they are with us!
A.C.: They were African. Real African. From Central Africa and Ethiopia.
TYLA: And they really connected with the piece, and they were so wonderful. It’ll be nice to be able to say, “I did the play with her” when I’m, like, one of those old cats.
ALLEN: With August Wilson’s work being so rich, sometimes even as actors we have to step back and think like the audience. There’s a lot going on. You’re trying to find out who the characters are—that’s the husband, or the brother, that’s the son. So, all the minutiae that he has in there, you’re not going to get all of that the first time around. I was going over my lines last night, and I saw a new emphasis on a word, I said, “Oh my god, I did the whole last run wrong.” (Laughter) And they loved me!
RON OJ: I noticed that a couple times. You just never listened to me.
