A podcast on Jitney (and other things)

A friend interviewed me for a podcast which she just published at Morley College (U.K.). Here is a link to the podcast along with a blurb she put together. Enjoy!

Morley Prize Podcast https://morleyradio.co.uk/programmes/morley-prize-s3ep3/

Series 3 Episode 3: Raymond Maxwell

The Prize for Unpublished Writers of Colour now accepts manuscripts in non-fiction.

In this third series of podcasts in support of Morley College’s Prize for Unpublished Writers of Colour, Dr Florence Marfo speaks to world–travelled Raymond Maxwell.  Raymond’s love of literature has been a constant in his life. Learning to read and write at a very young age, Raymond has said ‘I’ve never not known what to do with a book’. When Florence catches up with him, they discuss reading, his own writing and his love of August Wilson’s work. See here for a list of books and poems referred to during their chat: Mark Twain: Huckleberry Finn,  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: ‘The Psalm of Life’ W.E. B. Du Bois: The Souls of Black Folk, Paul Laurence Dunbar: ‘We Wear the Mask’, Jessica George: Maame, Zora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God , Gene Andrew Jarrett: Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird, Raymond Maxwell ‘Not a Concrete Poem Sonnet’ in On Lockdown: Poetry of the Pandemic 2020+, Ntozake Shange: Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, Booker T. Washington: Up From Slavery August Wilson: Jitney. 

Morley Prize – S3Ep3

Some notes on Radio Golf, the final play in the American Century Cycle. December 14, 2022

When August Wilson started writing serious plays in the 1980’s, journalists, drama critics, and literature professors took notice. A morning star had pierced the dawn of literature’s world. And the storytellers and truthsayers all began to write. They wrote reviews positive and not-so-positive, they wrote academic essays, they wrote dramatic criticism, they wrote analyses, inside accounts, outside accounts. Then the awards started coming, the Pulitzers, the Drama Critics Circle Awards, the diplomas and honorary degrees. The more plays Wilson wrote, the more the critics and scholars wrote. And the volume of material accumulated as the performances proliferated. Broadway, regional theaters, college and university drama departments, high school and community drama programs all played a role.

It’s an additive process. More has been written on the early plays in the Cycle than on the later plays. They have been around longer and have been performed more often. And now, with film adaptations of three of the early plays, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences, and most recently, The Piano Lesson, that additive process grows and grows. Correspondingly less has been written and discussed about the later plays, which some call “the darker plays.”

As Wilson’s skill as a playwright progressed and developed, the plays became darker in tone, perhaps more tragic. Even Wilson himself said that tragedy was the highest form of dramatic writing.

That brings us, in a roundabout way, to Radio Golf. There are a few good critical pieces out there on Radio Golf. Excellent essays by Harry Elam (Radio Golf in the Age of Obama), Alan Nadel (The Century That Can’t Fix Nothing with the Law – Radio Golf) and Margaret Booker (Radio Golf: the courage of his convictions – survival, success and spirituality) provide quality, exceptional quality, but not quantity. Radio Golf is just too new, still, too recent, and perhaps too politically sensitive, still. Plus, all the other, earlier plays continue to stimulate scholarly and popular output in some ways disproportionately to that of the later plays.

In Radio Golf, the principal character is Harmond Wilks, grandson of Caesar Wilks whom we encountered as local enforcer and slumlord in Gem of the Ocean. Harmond Wilks has done well in life, following his father (and grandfather) in the real estate business, so well in fact that he is now poised to run for mayor of Pittsburgh. His sidekick, Roosevelt Hicks, was his roommate and fraternity brother (inferred) at Cornell and they are together about to develop a large commercial real estate project in the Hill District. Hicks is not from old money as Wilks is, but he has lots of ambition even though his understanding of how things work is slightly superficial. Wilks’ wife, Mame, works in political public relations and is helping her husband with his campaign. Their campaign. There are only two other characters in the play. Sterling, a recently released ex-con when we first encountered him in Two Trains Running in the 60’s, is still basically the same rascal in the 90’s, but he has managed to survive. And then there is Old Joe. Old Joe, it turns out, is the son of Black Mary who was the half sister of Caesar Wilks, Harmond Wilks’ grandfather. So you see, it is a very inter-generational play that cuts through and organically links three plays in the Cycle.

Harmond and Roosevelt are all set to demolish a house in the Hill District to make way for a high-rise commercial complex that includes modern apartments, Whole Foods, and a Starbucks, when Harmond learns through Old Joe that the House in question belongs to Old Joe through his mother. After some investigation, he learns that the house was never properly and legally acquired by his real estate company before in turn selling it to the Wilks/Hicks redevelopment project. What is Harmond to do? How strong is a family link that has been forgotten and lost in time?

Of course, I’m leaving out a lot of details because I don’t want to spoil the story for you. Suffice it to say that Harmond makes the right decision but it results in strained relations with his wife and best friend who don’t really understand his motivation. Arguably, it is because of their respective backgrounds that they are focused primarily on life’s superficialities and not more substantive ideas and issues.

Finally, there is some serious signifying going on in Radio Golf. The title itself, Radio Golf, is perhaps an inside joke, even an oxymoron (a self-contradicting group of words). Hicks (pretty much a country “hick”) puts up a poster of Tiger Woods in the project office, while Wilks puts up a poster of MLK, another oxymoron, perhaps. Wilks wants to name the neighborhood health center for Sarah Degree, the first black RN in Pittsburgh, to remember her and her contributions to the community. It is a history of which we are aware as we have already encountered the real Sarah Degree in Seven Guitars (40’s) and Two Trains Running (60’s). Mame, Harmond’s wife, says no one remembers Sarah Degree and fails to notice that, by implication, the real history has already been erased, cancelled.

Harmond and Mame are having dinner with friends and Harmond suggests taking the husband of the other couple (illegal) Cuban cigars he bought in Costa Rica (and illegally smuggled back into the US).  Later Sterling accuses Harmond of receiving stolen property, both in the golf clubs stolen from Harmond’s car that Sterling acquired and sold back to him and in the disposition of Aunt Ester’s house. Harmond’s brother Raymond, we learn, rejected his father’s plan for his Ivy League education and instead ends up on his own and enlisting in the Army. He dies in Vietnam, but it is something nobody in the family likes to talk about. Harmond even refuses to discuss his brother with Sterling, and quickly changes the subject. Roosevelt, named for a former President though most likely not related by blood, has a fixation on business cards as a surrogate for what he does in real life.

Old Joe tells a story about a guy he served with in WWII who dies in battle while carrying the flag. The guy’s name is Joe Mott, which just so happens to be the same name as one of the pipe dreamers in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, the once owner of a “colored” gambing house who dreams of reopening a bigger gambling house and has visions of passing for white. Interestingly, critics have compared Wilson to O’Neill. Critics also try to compare Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone to O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh but the resemblance is barely superficial. There is a lot more to be said about comparisons between Wilson and O’Neill but for another time.

There are more, but the one that most struck me was when Roosevelt betrayed Harmond. Roosevelt bought Harmond out with money from a white entrepreneur who also used Roosevelt as the front man to get a Minority Set Aside on a radio station. Harmond accused Roosevelt of being a “high class thousand dollar whore” and referred to him as “the nigger in the woodpile,” a term used by Democrats in the 1860’s to accuse Republicans of trying to sneak an anti-slavery plank into their party platform. There is a silent film in the playlist that illustrates the original concept.

Long story short, there is a lot more than meets the eye going on in Radio Golf. I can’t wait for this final discussion with you all tomorrow night! 

Previous session notes.

Postscript. 12152022. In each play this session, we have made brief remarks about the play’s dedication and about the making or the structure of the play. Wilson dedicated Radio Golf to long-time friend and associate Benjamin Mordecai, Broadway producer and general manager, former managing director of Yale Repertory Theater and dean of Yale’s drama department. Mordecai died just a few months before Wilson, also at age 60, also of cancer. “To Benjamin Mordecai, who was there from the beginning – good company, a friend, a brother.”

And we learn from press accounts when Radio Golf reached Broadway in 2007 that much of the re-writing of the play, from rehearsals Wilson was unable to attend, was done basically from Wilson’s death bed. Wilson’s emails to director Kenny Leon and instructions shuttled back and forth by dramaturg Todd Kreidler shaped the play as it progressed in regional theaters en route to Broadway. Death is never easy to discuss and it’s hard to be productive and creative, I would imagine, when you are in immense pain, you know you have cancer, you know it is inoperable, and you know it is terminal. In that regard, much of Radio Golf might be, no, must be viewed through the prism of Wilson’s last will and testament.

Notes on Gem of the Ocean for DCPL study group. December 10, 2022

There is a lot to unpack in Gem of the Ocean and we won’t get it all done in one sitting. But let’s at least get a start.

Wilson dedicated Gem of the Ocean to his two daughters, Sakina and Azula. To me, that dedication indicated Wilson’s intent that the play be one for future generations, one whose themes and plots would endure and continue to inform readers and theater-goers. Interesting that Wilson wrote eight plays before dedicating one to his children. Also interesting that the play is the first one, chronologically, in the Cycle, though the penultimate one in order of plays written. I found a couple of Wilson poems in various places on the theme of advice to future generations, one expressly written by him for his daughter. Here are the two Wilson poems:

“Song, go to those yonder hills
and sit with the gods –
Call out their names
as Gabriel, a mighty note
on his judgement horn.
Hide not your face,
for you are not a sparrow
and thunder breaks not your wings –
As the gods go,
go with them in my name.”

******************************************

“Lean ahead! Languish not in the toils
of distant dreams gone by.
Be willing as a warrior, brave,
but donned with wicked intelligence
That dispels and frightens foolishness.
Remake each error with courageous correcting –
Conceive, conspire with each instance for its terrible honesty –
Give to each hallowed star its own revolving orbit –
And many roads will open for you.”

******************************************

Gem of the Ocean is the second play in the Cycle to begin with a defined prologue. The first one was King Hedley II, the seventh play in the Cycle, and the play in which Aunt Ester dies, as opposed to Gem of the Ocean, a play that fully features Aunt Ester as a character, more than any other play in the Cycle. So both “Aunt Ester” plays open with prologues, establishing Wilson’s chops as a playwright in the classical tradition established by the Greek and Roman dramatists and Shakespeare. As an aside, five plays by Shakespeare open with prologues, Pericles, Henry V, Henry VIII, Troilus and Cressida, and Romeo and Juliet. Two others, Macbeth (the Witches) and King Richard III (as Duke of Glouscester before he became King) open with what may be called prologues. See my notes here for more on the structure of the play.

What is the source of the title, Gem of the Ocean? There is no ocean in the play itself. There is a river, but no ocean. Only in the play-within-the-play, i.e., the mystical journey to the City of Bones, do we encounter an ocean. We know of the song, an almost American hymn, Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean, and we know of the controversy between the American, “Columbia, Gem of the Ocean,” and the British, “Britannia, Price of the Ocean,” as to authorship and precedence. The initiation journey to the “City of Bones” almost suggests that the City is the Gem of the Ocean. Aunt Ester tells Citizen, “The people made a kingdom out of nothing.”  

That brings us to a series of comparisons between Gem of the Ocean, the first chronological play in the Cycle, and Jitney, the first play written in the Cycle. Several similarities are pointed out by Professor Alan Nadel in his edited volume of essays, Completing the Twentieth Cycle. (“Returning Again, Again: Business in the Street In Jitney and Gem of the Ocean”). In Jitney, Booster, a star student-athlete, elects to murder his white girlfriend after being falsely accused of rape, while in Gem, Garret Brown chooses to die of drowning rather than be punished for stealing a bucket of nails that he did not steal. In both cases there is a suggestion of a sense of honor and an adherence to truth. Both plays highlight spaces sheltering families formed not by bloodlines but by mutual affiliations: the jitney station is a place brought together by a need (for transportation) not being met by the local economy, a gathering of men who create a livelihood essentially out of nothing. The sanctity of the jitney station (and, thus, the livelihood of the workers and their customers) is under attack by eminent domain and urban renewal. The sanctity of Aunt Ester’s house (This is a peaceful house!) is under attack from Caesar’s arrest warrants.

Let’s talk for a moment about Wilson’s inclusion of the closing lines from the poem, Thanatopsis (a view of death) by William Cullen Bryant. By way of background, Bryant was considered by many the first distinctive American poet, all former being British imitations or derivatives. For 50 years, Bryant was regarded as the leading American poet. He was an abolitionist and a founder of the Republican Party. By archiving and memorializing the poem’s final lines in Gem of the Ocean, Wilson connects the plight of African American life with the great struggle for progress that is the essence of being American. And while “thanatopsis” the word is Greek for “a view of death,” Wilson turns it on its head and makes it a call for life. Eli says, “You die by how you live.”

I recorded the entire poem, Thanatopsis, by William Cullen Bryant, here for my blog readers:

It is also worth mentioning here Sandra’s observation of the similarities between the City of Bones and the Valley of Dry Bones in the Old Testament. Ezekiel 37:4 connects Gem of the Ocean to Herald’s vision in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.

In previous sessions I have discussed the mask wearing during Citizen’s voyage to the City of Bones. Here I propose that the wearing of European dramatic masks by Eli, Solly and Black Mary during Citizen’s initiation both connects Wilson’s playwriting to that of the great Roman and Greek tragedians who preceded him and foreshadows the use of blackface and war paint (masks) in Radio Golf.

Finally: here is a link to all previous sessions

Here is the YouTube playlist

Fences by National Players at Hyattsville Publick Playhouse – December 9, 2022

Last night (Friday, December 9, 2022) Filomena and I met old friends Val and Doug at Publick Playhouse in Hyattsville, MD for a National Players performance of August Wilson’s Fences. We were all a bit curious about the one-night performance, but we just went with it. By the way, Val has been a participant and supporter of my Zoom American Century Cycle study groups and is a former co-worker.

Turns out, the National Players are a touring theatrical company based in Olney, MD, that has been in constant operation since 1949, the nation’s oldest touring company. And this performance was the final performance of their 73rd season AND their first selection of a play by a black writer with an all-black cast. We didn’t know any of this up front! In yet another coincidence, the company was founded by a Catholic University professor, Father Gilbert V. Hartke. The last time we hung with Val and Doug was at my CUA post-graduation party after finishing my MSLIS. 

Separate added feature of the performance include that it played before a hometown crowd (Hyattsville is not that far from Olney), many of the cast members were from DC or had DC area connections, and the price was right (for senior citizens like us, barely more than what you would pay to see a movie). The packed playhouse was filled with the usual suspects: August Wilson aficionados like us, family members of the ensemble, and mostly locals out for good entertainment. All three groups were fully satisfied by the performance.

And the play. If you’ve been reading this blog, you already know I’ve led study groups on the August Wilson American Century Cycle since 2018. Every year, sometimes twice a year, we’ve studied Fences, Wilson’s most famous and, by his own account, his best-written play (Wilson said his favorite play was Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, but Fences was his best play). I saw Fences on Broadway in 1987, saw the Denzel Washington produced film in which Viola Davis won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, and have seen several local productions. But this one, and specifically this Rose Maxson played by Ria Simpkins, was the first one whose performance was so authentic and so compelling that it actually brought tears to my eyes. And I’m not just talking a wee weeping, I’m talking boo-hoo tears. This Rose nailed the character for me in ways neither Mary Alice (in the James Earl Jones production), God rest her soul, or Viola Davis (in the Denzel Washington production and Oscar winner) ever did.

I think a lot of my emotional response may have been a result of the stage manager’s use of the set and the stage on the particular monologue (end of Act Two, Scene 1) when Troy comes home and announces his adulterous relationship with Alberta and the inevitable consequence, her pregnancy. Although it’s not in the actual stage directions, while Troy is talking he and Rose are separated by the entire width of the stage, with Troy in the foreground pacing back and forth making baseball analogies and Rose in the background at the edge of the porch, disbelieving (in her facial gestures) his every word. Then when it reaches the part where Rose says “I been standing with you,” both have moved and are standing side by side center stage, their physical positions reflecting Rose’s words “standing with you.” It was poetry and drama and choreography all compacted into a single moment in time. That is some serious stage management. August Wilson would have been proud. He also may have shed a tear or two! The Stage Manager, by the way, Ryan Anthony, is in the last semester of a BFA program at Bowie State University, according to Instagram (@NationalPlayers) and Twitter (@NationalPlayers). But back to Rose. Ria Simpkins. Remember that name.

The other characters who stood out for me include Donte Bynum, who as Bono grew on me over the course of the play (which is to say, I didn’t immediately like him from the start, but I loved him at the end, so something was happening!), and Avery Ford, who added charm, character and authenticity to the character Lyons, with his personable gestures repeated in his every interaction, especially with his father, Troy, his brother, Cory, and Bono. 

Two more final things about the production. To really understand August Wilson, I think it helps to see his plays performed in front of a black, church-going audience. The crowd’s vocal responses throughout the play, the “boos,” the “amens,” the applause at the end of every scene add so much value to the play. My readings of multiple August Wilson interviews suggest that was his exact intention. It’s the direct interaction by the theater-goers with the action on the stage as that energy transfers from the characters to the public via Wilson’s poetry.

And finally, last night at the end of the play, after the curtain call, the characters all came down into the audience to talk, to chat, to groove with the people in attendance. I call it Act Three of a two act play. Normally, at Arena Stage for example, the cast disappears into their dressing rooms and are never heard from again. And even on nights when there is a scheduled discussion, the actors behave in a somewhat stilted way, bothered to have to be there. I managed to meet “Rose” in the vestibule with her elderly mother and told her how her performance brought tears to my eyes. She thanked me and said, “Let me give you a hug.”

I scarfed a photo of the cast from Instagram:

It was all well worth the drive in horrible end-of-week commuter traffic from DC to Hyattsville. By the way, “Hyat” in Arabic means “Life.”

Notes on Seven Guitars for DCPL study group. 11172022

Let’s begin with the title.

No matter how hard you look or how much latitude you allow in terms of definition, you will never find seven guitars in this play. There are no seven guitars. So it must be a metaphor.

In fact, at the very beginning, there were seven guitars. Seven men on a stage, each with a guitar. According to Wilson, that was the image he saw that originally inspired the play. In a 1997 interview with Theater Week’s Carol Rosen, Wilson said,

This play started with an image of seven men with guitars on a stage. Someone named Floyd – it was Bannister at the time – but someone named Floyd Barton had been killed, and these men were in a lineup and they were responding to this unheard and unseen voice, this disembodied voice. “No sir,” “Well, I know Floyd  for however many years,” etc.

I thought by doing that, I would go on to do two things. I wanted to expose – sort of look behind – the songs, the interior psyche of the individuals who create teh songs so you see how the blues are created and where in essence they come from.

I was interested in showing the relationship between those men and white society, and between those men and black society, where from one viewpoint, they’re seen as drunkards and vagrants and things of that sort, and then from the other, they’re seen as carriers of the tradition, a very valuable and integral part of the community and the culture.

Later in the same interview, Wilson clarified that the play’s seven characters represent the seven guitars, each with their own voice and their individual character. There is a lot of numerology in the play. But I’m getting ahead of myself . . .

Wilson said later in the same interview that the play began with four men in a turpentine camp in Georgia, a definite hat-tip to Zora Neale Hurston who did extensive research on turpentine camp workers under the Federal Writers’ Project in the late 1930’s (Boyd, p. 323). It moved to Chicago in Wilson’s imagination before settling back in Pittsburgh and in his mother’s back yard. (Murphy, p. 124). The way the three women entered the play was told so many times, and with so many variations, that it became folklore, but all versions centered around one woman, Vera on the edge of the set, asking for her space in the play, then two other women coming in behind her.

After the title, there is the dedication. Wilson dedicates the play, “For my wife, Constanza Romero, without whom my life would lack the occasion of poetry her presence demands.” After the dedication in the last play, Two Trains Running, and its obvious tonal flatness, this one almost sings. No, this one definitely sings.

And then there is “A Note from the Playwright.” In the note, Wilson lists seven items, contents of his mother’s life:

I happen to think that the content
of my mother’s life –
her myths,
her superstitions,
her prayers,
the contents of her pantry,
the song that escaped
from her sometimes parched lips,
her thoughtful repose
and pregnant laughter –
are all worthy of art.

Could they also be the seven guitars?

Scene 1 of Act 1 is “prologue-ish.” A murder has been committed and a funeral held. The existence of the prologue alerts us that the drama is a tragedy, but the murder up front tells us the play is a murder mystery. A lot of information is conveyed immediately!

The rest of the play is the working out of both the murder mystery and the tragedy. So we know who dies but we don’t know how (the mystery part) or why (the tragedy part). We are glued to our seats until the final curtain.

In prior session notes, I have discussed the numerology, the listing of things, the card games, even the radio broadcast of the Louis-Conn fight (an obvious instance of poetic license since the fight didn’t even occur in the year in which the play was set) all exist as “dramatic devices” to fill in the narrative arc of the play.

Wilson experienced an interesting shift in revision strategy in Seven Guitars which he repeated for all remaining plays. In Wilson’s own words:

In the past I would rewrite the whole thing and bring it in, and, of course,
there were certain revisions that were made in the rehearsal process. But the
bulk of the work had been done, so I would sort of lay back off of it (if that’s
away of saying it) because I already did the rewrite, and now I was just
patching up various things. With Seven Guitars I didn’t do the rewrite prior
to rehearsal. I came into rehearsal knowing that the play had to be rewritten.
And I did my rewrite there in rehearsal, which didn’t allow me to lay back off
the material and do patchwork. I had to get in there and do the actual work,
which seemed to work better in the sense that I wasn’t writing in a vacuum.
l had the actors there, so you could press and then you could see a response,
or you could do something and see an immediate response. If you’re at home
doing the rewrite, you can’t get that response – you’re sort of working in a
vacuum, so to speak.

We also cannot not mention Hedley as the only West Indian black in the whole of the American Century Cycle. As the first character we’ve come across who is not from nearby or the deep south like so many other migrants to Pittsburgh, Hedley’s presence sets up a different dynamic in personal relations that we see playing out in his interactions with other members of the ensemble. This reflects what actually happened with so many black Caribbean immigrants moving to Northern cities and having to interact with a new country, a new black society unlike what was most prevalent in the south or in their original home, and in many cases, a new religious order. In effect they, these immigrants from the Caribbean faced somewhat different challenges than the run of the mill southern migrants. Hedley makes Seven Guitars a special case for studying the great migration.

Still another aspect of the great migration not covered in the American Century Cycle, however, is the rural to urban migration that took place within the south and never crossed into northern states.

Finally, for now, while Seven Guitars certainly serves as a prequel for King Hedley II, it has organic ties to Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom as both examine (1) the transformation of blues music into a marketable commodity and (2) the exploitative structure of the recording industry. But there is a twist. In Ma Rainey, the modernist Levee kills the black nationalist Toledo by stabbing him with a knife, while in Seven Guitars, the black nationalist Hedley kills the modernist Floyd Barton by cutting his windpipe with a machete. In both cases there is tragedy, but the tragic action is inverted, a double tragedy for both as Levee goes to prison and Hedley dies in the sanitarium (we presume).

I will continue this post after our discussion.

One of the study group members, a woman, mentioned that the three female characters in Seven Guitars represented three stages of maturity of a single female, sort of the three in one. Ruby being the young adult eager to branch out and interact with the world, Vera being the middle-aged looking for a second chance in life, and Louise, the experienced and seasoned matriarch. It hadn’t occurred to me before, this Wilson’s Holy Trinity of female characters in Seven Guitars. I find it to be an ideal worth exploring.

King Hedley II at Dominion Stage/Gunston Theatre, Arlington. 10282022

It was our first time seeing King Hedley II performed live on stage. Of course seeing a performance on stage is different from reading a play in a book, though one may inform the other. I had read King Hedley II multiple times for several iterations of our study group and had trained my imagination for what I was expecting to see on the stage. My earlier blog posts are here and here.

Arriving at the theatre and thumbing through the playbill (a single folded page, to get the full playbill you had to scan a QRC code to read it on your phone. How modern!), I saw that Stool Pigeon was being played by a woman, Jacqueline Youm. “Hmm,” I thought to myself, “that’s interesting.” But my mind was open to it. We’ll get back to that later.

The lights dim and the play begins. The first person who speaks is the female Stool Pigeon. I thought I knew what to expect as I had read and written about the play in this blog numerous times. But OMG, this actress (and director) took the Stool Pigeon/Greek chorus role to a whole new level, a delightful place, which would be repeated every time Stool Pigeon spoke throughout the play!

Here is how they did it. But first some background. Stool Pigeon was previously known as Canewell in the prequel to King Hedley II, Seven Guitars. Canewell was kinda sorta around when Hedley killed Floyd Barton with a machete to his windpipe in a bit of a drunken rage. In the intervening years, apparently, Canewell divulged that it was Hedley who killed Barton, earning the moniker Stool Pigeon, a person acting as a decoy or an informer. Additionally, and as a dramatic device, Stool Pigeon, plays the role of the Greek chorus in this very Greek tragedy, providing the prologue. From an earlier blog post,

In brief, the function of the chorus in Greek Drama is to provide commentary on actions and events occurring in the play, to allow time and space to the playwright to control the atmosphere and expectations of the audience, to allow the playwright to prepare the audience for key moments in the storyline, and to underline certain elements and downplay others. Go back and re-read Stool Pigeon’s parts and it becomes evident that is the role he is playing.

So, there is Stool Pigeon, there is Canewell (his earlier manifestation and perhaps, his alter ego), and there is the Greek chorus role he (or she) plays. But this production adds yet another feature to the character as written. When Stool Pigeon recites from his book (it sounds like the Bible, but I checked the quotes and it just isn’t), he takes on a completely different persona, in his tone of voice, in his posture, in his whole being. He becomes a sort of oracle, a high holy man, a priest. Then, as soon as his recitation is complete, he collapses, in a way, and returns to his normal self, a sort of trickster who collects newspapers (an archivist, perhaps?) and has seen it all in this small urban village.

Jacqueline Youm plays a very convincing role as this most complex character, which the audience recognizes in their responses throughout the play and at the final curtain call. George Bernard Shaw, the great Irish playwright wrote, “It is in the nature of great acting that we are not to see this woman as Ophelia, but Ophelia as this woman.” After last night, I have a whole different idea about Stool Pigeon.

Other actors were also exceptional. Mack Leamon provides a spectacular interpretation of King Hedley II, the only play in Wilson’s Cycle named for one of its characters. You get from his bio that he is both a seasoned actor AND a seasoned Wilson performer. It shows.

Vanessa McNair, a novice to the stage, serves us an admirable Tonya, wife of King Hedley. Her monologues, some of the most popular in all of Wilson’s plays (as evidenced in monologue competitions across the country) are delivered clearly and with punch and panashe. She is no Viola Davis, who won a Tony for best actress in the role. Perhaps the theater-goers are better off for it.

My only complaint in this production was the failure to fully capitalize on the meow of the cat at the beginning of the play and at the final curtain. Aunt Ester, the matriarch of the Cycle, dies in the course of King Hedley II. The meow of the cat at the beginning of the play, for me, foreshadows the meow of the cat at the very end, when slain Hedley’s blood flows into the soil where Aunt Ester’s cat is buried, symbolizing the “resurrection” of the spirit of Aunt Ester and all that means for the community.

The play runs through November 5. I am giving serious consideration to seeing it again. Don’t miss this excellent (and full of surprises) production if you are in the area.

Notes on Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. October 25, 2022.

I began this week’s reading with Joan Herrington’s “I Ain’t Sorry For Nothin’ I Done: August Wilson’s Process of Playwriting.” Her chapter on Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (she also has chapters on Fences, Jitney, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) is appropriately titled “The Cultural Connection: The Development of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.” As one of Wilson’s principal dramaturges during the period, Herrington’s book takes us through many of the back stories as the play was conceived and drafted, and the changes it went through in rehearsals and performances on the path to Broadway.

At one point in going through various references I told my wife, “I might not read the play this time. I’ve already read it through over ten sessions.” But I knew I was deceiving myself. I knew I couldn’t wait to read the actual play, if only to see what might spring out at me that I missed in previous readings. As it turned out, I would not be disappointed. But first some backstories . . .

The play began its life as a picture Wilson saw in a National Geographic magazine spread of Bearden’s paintings and collages. After seeing the Bearden work, Old Mill Hands Lunch Bucket, Wilson was inspired to write a poem (we don’t have access to the poem, but we know that there are “thousands of poems” in his archived papers, scheduled to be available to the public at U Pitt in early 2023). The poem grew into a short story. Then, sixteen pages into the short story, Wilson decided to convert it into a play. The rest is history. The process gives us an interesting bird’s-eye view into Wilson’s creative process.

Here’s Wilson’s statement on Bearden from a foreward he wrote to a book about Bearden:

From Romare: His Life and Art. Myron Schwartzman

The character Bynum is named for Wilson’s grandfather, Bynum Cutler, who we first hear about in a poem Wilson recited among his friends, Poem to My Grandfather (transcription in the YouTube comments).

The character, Zonia, is named for Wilson’s grandmother, Zonia Wilson, who, legend has it, traveled by foot from Spear, NC to Pittsburgh, a distance of 437 miles. Zonia is also the name of a species of butterflies in the family Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) named the Hesperiidae.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist including the map!

From Spear, NC to Pittsburgh

But back to Herrington. Herrington describes the play as a “call to establish cultural relationships.” We see those relationships and the effort to re-establish them, whether after slavery (represented by the seven years Loomis spent in forced servitude to Joe Turner) or after the dissolution of prior relationships. In fact, we can make a list: Herald with Martha; Martha with Zonia; Zonia with Reuben; Jeremy with just about anybody, Bynum with his Shiny Man. And others. On a subsurface level, we can see Loomis’s struggle to connect with his ancestry, the Africans cast overboard during the middle passage whose bones emerge and take on flesh in Loomis’s vision. His initial attempt to connect fails – he sees them and he sees himself as one of them, but his “legs won’t walk,” i.e., he refuses to see the true connection. Later in the play, he makes (and accepts) the connection to his ancestral roots, resulting in his proclamation, “I’m standing! My legs stood up! I’m standing now!”

There is a recurring phrase used. My daddy taught me, my mama taught me, over and over again. Bynum’s father taught him how to look at a man and see his song (and how to use his special binding skill), Seth’s father taught him how to make pots. Molly’s mother taught her how not to get pregnant. This inter-generational transmission of knowledge may get overlooked but it is an essential part of the message of this play, IMHO.

One more thing that I’ve never mentioned in any of the previous sessions. Eugene is a boy Reuben talks about. In the play, Reuben raised pigeons and sold them to Bynum for his voodoo practices. Eugene asked Reuben to free his birds after he died. But Reuben did not fulfill the promise he made.

But in real life, Eugene was the name of a crippled boy (sounds like polio) who hung out at the boarding house Bearden’s grandparents ran in Pittsburgh. Romare and Eugene became friends and Eugene showed Romare how to draw the scenes he (Eugene) had seen in the neighborhood, especially erotic drawings of things he had seen at a nearby brothel where he lived with his mother. This was the beginning of Romare’s inspiration to draw things. Eugene also raised doves in cages in his backyard.

When Eugene died, they were both barely teenagers. One of Bearden’s paintings depicts Eugene’s funeral, “Farewell Eugene,” and shows his doves fluttering above the mourners, freed from their cages:

Farewell Eugene, 1978.

Meanwhile, back to the play. The ghost of Seth’s mother, Miss Mabel, haunts Reuben. The implication is that Eugene cannot enter heaven until Reuben frees his pigeons:

Reuben: She says, “Didn’t you promise Eugene something?” Then she hit me with her cane. She say, “Let them pigeons go.” Then she hit me again.

And later, “Say he couldn’t go back home until I let them go. I couldn’t get to the door to the coop fast enough.”

Act 2, Scene 4.

Why all this going on about Eugene? Well, a better question might be “Why does Wilson include his story in the play?” It’s the ultimate cultural connection, perhaps, the tie between the living and the dead.

Notes from previous sessions.

Mapping the 4B influences, revised for DC Public Library study group 10212022. revised 02232023.

The graphic above represents Wilson’s stated 4B’s influences, the Blues, Baraka, Borges and Bearden. It is revised from a previous attempt. Also, in each quadrant, I’ve included influences Wilson mentioned in interviews, separate and distinct from the four majors, including, in clockwise order from upper right, respected playwrights, favorite poets, civil rights activists, and the famous writer, James Baldwin. Then, in second order derivative, the graphic lists major influencers of the 4B’s, based on research and on their writings..

If we take one baby step forward and call these 4B influences “precursors,” we can tap into what Borges wrote about Kafka, one of his primary influencers,

“The word “precursor” is indispensable to the vocabulary of criticism, but one must purify it from any connotation of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that each writer creates his precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future. In this correlation, the identity or plurality of men doesn’t matter.” (Borges. Kafka and His Precursors. 1951)

All that is to say, by sharing with us his major influencers, his precursors so to speak, Wilson not only modifies our perception of their work, but projects into the future how the future itself (of literature) will be modified. In a somewhat related way, Patrick Maley opens the door for us to apply Wilson’s portrait of black Americans to perhaps unresolved social identity crafting of characters in the plays of Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams in yet another backward glance that improves our future view. (Maley. After August: Blues, August Wilson and American Drama. 2019)

The most obvious revision is the addition of the influence of folklore (see upper right corner), and, specifically, Zora Neale Hurston’s retelling and collecting of folklore, and its influence in informing blues performers, creators, and writers of the rich folkloric tradition.

Notes on Fences for DCPL book club/study group – 10192022

Week 3: Fences (1984) Synopsis: In 1957, Troy Maxson, a former Negro Baseball League player, is a bitter man in his 50s who works as a garbageman. His frustration and disappointments in life affect his wife Rose and son Cory.

– Freytag’s Pyramid Dramatic Structure article: https://jerichowriters.com/what-is-freytags-pyramid/
https://www.clearvoice.com/blog/what-is-freytags-pyramid-dramatic-structure/

A mapping of Fences using Freytag pyramid analysis: https://augustwilsonstudygroup.wordpress.com/2021/03/16/a-mapping-of-fences-using-freytags-pyramid/

– Article on Negro Baseball leagues. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/sports/baseball/mlb-negro-leagues.html
https://www.mlb.com/news/negro-leagues-given-major-league-status-for-baseball-records-stats

– America’s Most Undefeated Playwright: https://theundefeated.com/features/august-wilson-is-americas-most-undefeated-playwright/

– YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0Lvs-e_eIXYPmItHweBOyfAwDJ-x1qwO

– Fences: https://eguria.blogspot.com/2021/10/fences-by-august-wilson.html?spref=tw

– Full play pdf: https://augustwilsonstudygroup.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/fences1.pdf
– Court Theater study guide post performance questions, p. 17 (provided)
_ Kennedy Center Guide: https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/resources-for-educators/classroom-resources/media-and-interactives/media/theater/august-wilson–fences/

Session #8

Fences was not written by an amateur, then stored away, then revisited several years later and expanded and reworked to be the Cycle opener like Jitney. Nor was it written in two pieces and later consolidated while still bifurcated to produce one play like Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. No. Though very rigorously reworked and work-shopped in the drafting stage and in rehearsals, Fences was a baby born whole, much like the portrayal in its artistic inspiration, Romare Bearden’s painting/collage, Continuities.

Very much a family play, Fences was August Wilson’s greatest commercial success, on the stage and also, to date, on the screen. The original 1987 stage production played for a record-breaking 525 performances and won four Tony Awards (best play, best actor best actress, and best direction), three Drama desk Awards and a Pulitzer Prize. The 2010 Broadway revival earned three Tony awards (best revival, best, actor, best actress) and three Drama Desk Awards. It grossed over $12.9 million.

Of the multiple improvements in both plot development and character development made during rehearsals enroute to Broadway in the original 1987 stage production, one stands out and qualifies as an interesting back story. At the end of Act 2 Scene 4 when Cory and Troy have the “showdown” that resulted in Cory leaving home for good, the final polished version has Cory swinging a baseball bat twice at Troy and Troy taking the bat from Cory and expelling him from the “garden.” In an earlier version, after Cory swings the bat twice, Troy pulls out a pistol and cocks the hammer back in a threatening motion, promising to kill Cory for his misdeeds. But an interesting thing occurred while the play was in rehearsal. About the same tie, in real life, Marvin Gaye (the Motown singer) was shot and killed by his father. The news of the death of the famed entertainer went viral. Cooler heads prevailed and the gun scene was taken out of the play.

I won’t repeat here points I proposed previously for discussion as they are laid out below in various session notes. I did observe in this reading a marked difference i spirituality between Troy and Rose. Troy believes in a rivalry, and almost equality between God and Satan and in fact, in some spheres, Satan may almost reign supreme. For example, in all of Troy’s descriptions about his own death or even his struggles to escape or to avoid death, it seems that evil forces must win in the final analysis. There is no hope for redemption, it is just a matter of time.

But we see in Rose a developing religiosity, especially after Troy’s adultery and Rose’s decision to rise Raynell as her own daughter when Alberta dies in childbirth. And it seems the big loser in the calculation is Troy. We see Rose more involved in church activities after Troy’s misdeed, while before there was not even mention of church bake sales or services. Even Bono seems more involved in church after chilling on his relationship as Troy’s drinking buddy and his obvious disdain to Troy’s “carrying on” with Alberta.

Finally, I’ve seen evidence in this reading that, contrary to Troy’s pontifications about responsibilities to home and the family, not only do his actions not support such a belief, but nor do the actions of either of his sons, Cory or Lyons. Cory tells a big old fib about his job at A&P in order to sneak off and play football. Then he refuses to give his father the least respect he is due, saying “excuse me” when passing him on the porch steps. Lyons goes from hitting his father up for spending change on his father’s payday, instead of working for his own money at 34, to forging other people’s checks. Lyons ends up incarcerated and striped of any income earning potential, following in his dad’s footsteps.

Consolidated notes from prior sessions.

Notes on Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. 10112022

The most interesting and, indeed the most foundational bit of the back story of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is that in its original form, the play had only five characters: Ma, Dussie Mae, Sylvester, Irvin and Sturdyvant. The band members did not have an existence in the original form of the play.

That 1976 version of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom actually predated Wilson’s first version of Jitney (1979). Uncompleted, it was stashed away. Wilson returned to the unfinished script in 1981, buoyed by his receipt of a fellowship from the Minneapolis Playwrights’ Center and the subsequent completion of a play that did not become a part of ten-play Cycle, Fullerton Street. He added the four musicians, Toledo, Cutler, Slow Drag and Levee, reworked the play, and submitted it in 1982 to the O’Neill Playwright Conference. Then in 1984, the play was produced by Yale Repertory Company under the direction of Lloyd Richards.

In real life, there is no record of Ma Rainey recording music after her contract was terminated by Paramount in 1928, so we might conclude that in 1927, when the play is set, Ma’s recording career was already in decline, eclipsed by her protege, Bessie Smith. That might explain some of Ma’s monologues in Act 2 where she laments her treatment by the recording industry.

But back to the play. First, read very carefully “The Play,” a sort of prologue at the start of the play. I just uploaded the audio on Soundcloud here.

I am running a parallel group on Zora Neale Hurston just to see if I can find parallels in Wilson’s work. I decided I would try to identify each time Wilson applies folklore to fill in gaps in his narrative arc. And boy did I find oodles in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Which stands to reason, after all, as blues are just folklore put to music. Anyway, here is my folklore list.

1. The story Toledo told in Act 1 Scene 1 about the Lord’s Prayer.
2. The story Slow Drag told about Eliza Cotton selling his soul to the devil.
3. The story Cutler told about how Slow Drag got his name.
4. Toledo’s story/explanation about “leftovers.”
5. Levee’s story about his mother’s rape and his father’s murder.
6. Cutler’s story about Reverend Gates in Act 2 Scene 1.

So what constitutes folklore, you may ask? A basic definition may suffice:

Folklore generally refers to cultural expressions, such as narratives, jokes, beliefs, proverbs, legends, myths, music, songs, dances, costumes, food, and festivals, through which individuals and groups shape and disseminate a shared identity.

And why did I select these six particular pieces as folklore? When you get the sense that a story has been told over and over again such that all the listeners know it or such that it has acquired a mythological status, then for me, that is folklore.

A noted folklorist, William Bascom, who collaborated with Ralph Bunche on A Guide to West Africa and was himself an expert on West Africa folklore provides the following functions of folklore:

• Folklore lets people escape from repressions imposed upon them by society.
• Folklore validates culture, justifying its rituals and institutions to those who perform and observe them.
• Folklore is a pedagogic device which reinforces morals and values and builds wit.
• Folklore is a means of applying social pressure and exercising social control.

I know what you may be thinking. You may be questioning how Levee’s story fits any of the folklore requirements. Well, the thought did occur to me, what if Levee is making all this up? The telling of it certainly sounds well-rehearsed. And it certainly evokes sympathy and pity from all those within ear range. But what if it’s just not true? I know, it’s pretty cold-hearted of me to think this way. But I have seen people tell stories about their families that turned out to be lies.

Toledo’s “leftovers” story is a genre of folklore that emerges in many of Wilson’s plays. It made me think about Doub from Jitney during his military service in Korea, picking up the war dead after each battle and stacking them six high in a truck. Leftovers from battle. Which brought to mind a podcast I recently listened to, 27 Ghosts of the Ostfront, about the 300,000 dead from the Battle of Stalingrad, a type of inadvertent memorial to war. And we will see other references to “leftovers” in other plays in the Cycle. Watch for them.

All four band members are griots in the classical sense, storytellers, transmitters of the living tradition. Toledo was the head griot, a Master of Knowledge (as he shows us throughout many monologues), and his death at the end of the play is definitely something to mourn, the passing of a lettered generation. And Ma Rainey is a special type of griot, a master of the knowledge of blues. But Ma Rainey is hard on her proteges who do not worship her, disrespectful to Dussie Mae, and hard on Levee, and in real life, hard on her prize pupil, Bessie Smith.

Speaking of Bessie Smith, apparently the song on the rehearsal list, Prove it On Me, that Ma Rainey was scheduled to record, was originally a Bessie Smith composition that contained references to her and Ma’s “gender-bending” style. We also know it was through a Bessie Smith recording that August Wilson first discovered the blues. We can only wonder why this play focused on Ma Rainey and not Bessie Smith.

Let’s close with a link to the sterling voice of Professor Sterling Brown in his 1932 poem dedicated to Ma Rainey: https://youtu.be/z0OENWZ9kW4. You can find the poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47545/ma-rainey

Consolidated notes on Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom