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Bard of His People |
| Section: THE ARTS / THEATER |
| Author: Michael Marshall |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 4/1/1990 |
| Size: 1,637 Words, 9,187 Characters |
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The Piano Lesson is a deceptively sedate title for a play that seethes with such violent energies. But the eerie wind-blown curtain that opens the play offers a premonition of the forces that are about to blow through the plain and proper Pittsburgh home in which it is set.
Playwright August Wilson has become the griot - the storyteller - of black American experience in the twentieth century. He vividly captures the surface of black life in all its variety and vitality. Then he cuts beneath that surface to reveal the powerful currents churning within. In The Piano Lesson, this results in a play that successfully manages to be both funny and entertaining, yet deeply moving and disturbing.
The plot, at one level, is straightforward. It is the 1930s and Doaker Charles (Carl Gordon) lives together with his niece, Bernice (S. Epatha Merkerson), and her daughter, Maritha (April Foster). The fam...
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...ve produced didactic artificial plays. Wilson, however, has proven himself equal to his task, a fit bard for his people's history. In this play he has successfully dramatized the psychic impact of social and historical forces on characters that are vivid and true. It is a gripping drama of conflict and catharsis that represents a major contribution to black culture and to American theater.
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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