About the Play
SYNOPSIS As urban planning threatens the demise of a popular lunch counter in Pittsburgh’s close-knit Hill District, owner Memphis struggles with whether or not to sell, and at what cost. Wilson’s intimate portrait of a time of extraordinary challenge and change in our country is Weston’s 4th annual American Masters production. Directed by Reginald L. Douglas, Artistic Producer of City Theatre in Pittsburgh, this production will bring audiences into the middle of the action of this timely American masterpiece.
From left to right: Bernard Gilbert, Beethovan Oden, Eboni Flowers, Cary Hite, Guiesseppe Jones, Raphael Peacock. Not pictured: Lawrence Evans. (Photo by Hubert Schriebl) ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT AUGUST WILSON (née: Frederick August Kittel, Jr.) was one of America’s most prolific twentieth-century playwrights. He was born in Pittsburgh in 1945 and grew up in the Hill District, where he would later set nine of his ten Century Cycle (or Pittsburgh Cycle) plays. The Century Cycle traced the daily experiences of African Americans, decade by decade, throughout the twentieth century. Wilson left school at sixteen after falsely being accused of plagiarism by a teacher. He focused on developing his writing while working various odd jobs, frequenting the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh so often that he later received an honorary high school diploma from the institution.
At 20, he began writing poetry, often working in bars and diners to capture the voices of the people around him. His work was also influenced by Malcolm X, the Black Power movement of the 1960s, blues music, and writers August Wilson such as James Bob Child (Associated Press) Baldwin and Ed Bullins. Wilson co-founded the Black Horizon Theater in Pittsburgh in 1968. There, his first stage plays were performed, including early versions of Jitney. In 1969, Wilson married his first wife, Brenda Burton. They had one daughter, Sakina, but the two divorced in 1972.
After spending the bulk of the 1970s writing plays and poetry in Pittsburgh, Wilson moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota and secured a job adapting Native American folk tales into educational scripts for the Science Museum of Minnesota. In 1980, he received a fellowship at The Playwrights’ Center, one of the nation’s leading play development organizations. Through this fellowship, Wilson continued to develop his voice, leading to the premiere of Jitney and launch of the Century Cycle just two years later. It would be the only of Wilson’s plays in the Century Cycle not produced on Broadway within three years of its world premiere (eventually there would be a Broadway production in 2017). Later that year, Wilson workshopped another play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference. It was there that Wilson began working with Artistic Director Lloyd Richards, who was also the Artistic Director of Yale Repertory Theater from 1979-1991. The two quickly formed an artistic partnership that spanned nearly two decades and would prove to be one of the most fruitful and influential in American theatre history.
Two years after the workshop at the O’Neill, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom premiered at Yale Rep under Richards’ expert direction. Wilson returned to the O’Neill the next summer to workshop Fences, one of his most famous works. It premiered at Yale Rep in 1985 and earned Wilson his first Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Wilson’s next two plays, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and The Piano Lesson, were likewise workshopped in at the O’Neill and premiered at Yale Rep. Wilson was once again awarded the Pulitzer August Wilson with Lloyd Richards Prize for his work on The (Yale Repertory Theater) Piano Lesson.
He spent the next decade working on his plays Two Trains Running, Seven Guitars, King Hedley II, and Gem of the Ocean. In 1994, Wilson married Constanza Romero, a costume designer he met while working on The Piano Lesson. They had one daughter, Azula Wilson. While working on the final Century Cycle play in 2005, Wilson was diagnosed with liver cancer. Radio Golf premiered at Yale Rep soon after his diagnosis, but Wilson passed away before its 2007 premiere on Broadway.
August Wilson’s impact can be traced throughout every facet of the American Theatre. He was a visionary storyteller who transformed both the form and content of contemporary playwriting in America. He was also a fierce advocate for equity and fair representation both onstage and off. Shortly after his death, the Virginia Theater on Broadway was renamed the August Wilson Theater, becoming the first Broadway theatre to bear the name of an African American artist. Throughout his life, he was nominated for ten Tony Awards and won one for Fences.
More than anything, Wilson believed in the power of theatre to transform lives. In a 2000 New York Times article, he wrote: “Theater, as a powerful conveyer of human values, has often led us through the impossible landscape of American class, regional and racial conflicts, providing fresh insights and fragile but enduring bridges of fruitful dialogue. It has provided us with a mirror that forces us to face personal truths and enables us to discover within ourselves an indomitable spirit that recognizes, sometimes across wide social barriers, those common concerns that make possible genuine cultural fusion.”
Wilson’s entire Century Cycle is as follows:
Gem of the Ocean (1900s, written in 2003) Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1910s, written in 1988) Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1920s, written in 1984) The Piano Lesson (1930s, written in 1990) Seven Guitars (1940s, written in 1995) Fences (1950s, written in 1987) Two Trains Running (1960s, written in 1991) Jitney (1970s, written in 1982) King Hedley II (1980s, written in 1999) Radio Golf (1990s, written in 2005)
The plays are not a series, but do feature reoccurring characters as well as the children of previous characters. Wilson also wrote the plays Recycle, Black Bart and the Sacred Hills, Fullerton Street, The Homecoming, The Coldest Day of the Year, and a one-man show, How I Learned What I Learned. Several theatres around the country have produced the complete Century Cycle, including the Goodman Theatre, The Denver Center, The Huntington Theatre Company, the Pittsburgh Public Theater, and Seattle Repertory Theatre.
PITTSBURGH’S HILL DISTRICT Memphis’ restaurant, the setting of Two Trains Running, sits on 1621 Wylie Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. This is neighborhood where August Wilson spent most of his formative years and set nine of his ten plays in the Century Cycle (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set in Chicago).
During the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, the Hill District was a thriving center of black culture, entertainment, and business. Following World War II, the federal government committed to upgrade housing across the nation, and 95 acres of the Hill District were selected for redevelopment in August Wilson mural in the Hill District, painted by Kyle Holbrook and the Pittsburgh. City planners, MLK Community Mural Project however, disregarded the effects such wholesale redevelopment would have on residents and the neighborhood social fabric. In the summer of 1956, some 1,300 homes were demolished, displacing about 1,500 families (more than 8000 residents), the great majority of whom were black. This cleared the way for the construction of the Civic Arena to host downtown events and attract major entertainment (now replaced by the PPG Paints Arena).
The redevelopment severed the Hill District from surrounding neighborhoods, resulting in a dramatic economic decline. Between the 1970s and 1990s, over 70 percent of the Hill District’s residents and hundreds of businesses moved out of the neighborhood. 40 percent of its current residents now live below the poverty line. In recent years, various individuals and civic groups have invested in the re-development of the Hill District. A pharmacy was opened in the neighborhood in 2010 and in 2013 the Hill House Economic Development Corporation opened the first grocery store in the neighborhood in 30 years.
After August Wilson’s death, Paul Ellis, Wilson’s nephew, formed the Daisy Wilson Artist Community. Named after Wilson’s mother, the Artist Community aimed to restore Wilson’s childhood home and create a center for artists and scholars inspired by his work. In 2018, Denzel Washington led a $5 million fundraising campaign to support the renovations. Once completed, the building will house artist studios, galleries, performance venues, and gathering spaces. To learn more about the August Wilson House, visit: http://augustwilsonhouse.org/.
Wilson’s birthplace, 1727 Bedford Avenue THE GROUND ON WHICH WE STAND On June 26, 1996, August Wilson delivered the keynote address at the 11th biennial Theatre Communications Group national conference. His speech, entitled “The Ground on Which I Stand,” confronted the American theatre community on issues of race and representation. He critiqued institutions for their lack of support for African-American playwrights and disregard of black narratives and cultures. Wilson sparked conversation among the entire industry, and the impact of his words can still be felt today. Below are key quotes from this speech, which can be accessed in full at https://www.americantheatre.org/2016/06/20/the-ground-on-which-i-stand/
“In one guise, the ground I stand on has been pioneered by the Greek dramatists—by Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles—by William Shakespeare, by Shaw, Ibsen, and Chekhov, Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams. In another guise, the ground that I stand on has been pioneered by my grandfather, by Nat Turner, by Denmark Vesey, by Martin Delany, Marcus Garvey, and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. That is the ground of the affirmation of the value of one’s being, an affirmation of his worth in the face of this society’s urgent and sometimes profound denial…As a people who had arrived in America chained and malnourished in the hold of a 350-foot Portuguese, Dutch, or English sailing ship, we were now seeking ways to alter our relationship to the society in which we live—and, perhaps more important, searching for ways to alter the shared expectations of ourselves as a community of people.”
“It is difficult to disassociate one part of my life from another. I have strived to live it all seamless—art and life together, inseparable and indistinguishable…The ideas of self- determination, self-respect, and self-defense that governed my life in the ’60s I find just as valid and self-urging in 1996.”
“If you do not know, I will tell you: Black theatre in America is alive, it is vibrant, it is vital…it just isn’t funded. Black theatre doesn’t share in the economics that would allow it to support its artists and supply them with meaningful avenues to develop their talent and broadcast and disseminate ideas crucial to its growth.”
“We can meet on the common ground of the American theatre. We cannot share a single value system if that value system consists of the values of white Americans based on their European ancestors. We reject that as Cultural Imperialism. We need a value system that includes our contributions as Africans in America. Our agendas are as valid as yours. We may disagree, we may forever be on opposite sides of aesthetics, but we can only share a value system that is inclusive of all Americans and recognizes their unique and valuable contributions. The ground together: We must develop the ground together. We reject the idea of equality among equals, but we say rather the equality of all men.”
“To pursue our cultural expression does not separate us…We are Americans trying to fulfill our talents. We are not the servants at the party. We are not apprentices in the kitchens. We are not the stable boys to the king’s huntsmen. We are Africans. We are Americans. The irreversible sweep of history has decreed that. We are artists who seek to develop our talents and give expression to our personalities. We bring advantage to the common ground that is the American theatre.”
”Theatre can…disseminate ideas, it can educate even the miseducated, because it is art—and all art reaches across that divide that makes order out of chaos, and embraces the truth that overwhelms with its presence, and connects man to something larger than himself and his imagination. Theatre asserts that all of human life is universal. Love, Honor, Duty, Betrayal belong and pertain to every culture and every race. The way they are acted out on the playing field may be different, but betrayal is betrayal whether you are a South Sea Islander, a Mississippi farmer, or an English baron. All of human life is universal, and it is theatre that illuminates and confers upon the universal the ability to speak Photo by Bill Wade for all men.”
“The ground together: The ground of the American theatre on which I am proud to stand…the ground which our artistic ancestors purchased with their endeavors…with their pursuit of the American spirit and its ideals. I believe in the American theatre. I believe in its power to inform about the human condition, I believe in its power to heal, ‘to hold the mirror as ’twere up to nature,’ to the truths we uncover, to the truths we wrestle from uncertain and sometimes unyielding realities. All of art is a search for ways of being, of living life more fully.” Sets and Costumes
Set Rendering Courtesy of Set Designer Alexander Woodward
Costume Renderings (Holloway and Risa) Courtesy of Costume Designer Sarita Fellows Interviews
AN INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR REGINALD DOUGLAS By Rachel Liff, Artistic Associate/Education Coordinator
RACHEL LIFF: How do you prepare to direct a play? Did your process differ for this production?
REGINALD DOUGLAS: I do mostly new work, so my usual preparation starts with talking to a writer. Mr. Wilson has left us, but it feels like I have really been preparing for this process my whole life by reading his canon, following his career, and learning his way of thinking about theatre making. For example, his essay, “The Ground on Which I Stand,” has greatly influenced my work.
I tried very hard to treat Two Trains Running like a new play, to be open to the “could be’s” and “what if’s,” and really reimagine how it lives in this space. A lot of my work was research based—looking into the 60’s in Pittsburgh and in our country. I’m grateful that I now live in Pittsburgh and had the opportunity to go to the Hill District. Many of the places that are mentioned in the play are still there, so going there was a very special part of my pre-production process. I got to walk the path these characters walk and take in their sights with my own eyes in a way that you don’t normally get to do when you’re directing a play. I also did a lot of text analysis. This play is very poetic, and a lot of the magic of the play is in how natural the conversation is, so I wanted to understand this text thoroughly—the rhythms of it, how fast it can move, when it needs to slow down. I spent a lot of time reading the play alone and thinking about the rhythm of the piece and the music of these characters in preparations for working with the actors.
RL: What excites you about Two Trains Running?
RD: I love plays that are about real people. Of the Wilson canon, these characters feel the most “every-day” to me. I love that Wilson elevates regular African Americans into larger-than-life heroes with big wants and fervent dreams. There was a moment in rehearsal the other day when I got emotional because three actors were just drinking coffee and laughing together onstage. It was moving to see three, everyday black men having a regular conversation about the world around them full of insight and joy. That doesn’t happen very often in the theatre or our culture, sadly.
I also believe that the personal is political in this play. I am struck by the personal challenges these characters are going through, most significantly Memphis’ fight for his diner. That personal desire to hold onto his business speaks volumes about our political culture, both in the 60’s and today. What is gentrification? What are the rules of ownership and capitalism? What are the rules of race and class and how do we break them? These are the big questions that the play is asking, and Wilson’s ability to take these huge, political ideas and put them into a human, personal story makes for a provocative and exciting piece of theatre.
RL: What is your relationship with August Wilson’s work?
RD: So many of the writers that I am excited by were inspired by August Wilson, so I very much feel the legacy of his career in the new work that I do. This is actually the first August Wilson play that I’m directing. I joke that I’ve purposefully avoided directing it as a black director because it’s so often the thing that you’re asked to direct. I have such a reverence for his ability to put us on the stage. Wilson so beautifully added dynamic, complicated, honest, challenging black characters into the canon. I’ve spent my entire career challenging what the canon can look like and who can be a part of it, so I find my career to be a direct lineage to the same ideals that Wilson fought for. I am always asking “what if the American Theatre could include me, too?,” and one of the first people to ask that question really brilliantly, succinctly, and powerfully was August Wilson. I come to this work with lots of gratitude, lots of curiosity, and lots of respect.
RL: What makes this production unique?
RD: I am really excited by the ways that we are reimagining the world and making it more political, more urgent, more intimate, more honest, and more moving. I am excited by how intimate the space is. I feel like we’re sitting in the diner with these characters. I’m so grateful to our scenic designer, Alexander Woodward, and the shop team here at Weston for how they’ve realized this really specific, unique, and historically accurate world. I think the intimacy of it makes it feel modern, current, and urgent.
I’m also really struck by the work that our sound designer, Sinan Zafar, and I are doing. We are taking the sounds of Motown and integrating them with Malcolm X’s speeches. I think it allows for the political fervor that is at the core of this text. The black artists of the 60’s were using their artistry to speak on behalf of the African American community.
RL: What do you hope audiences take away from this production?
RD: My hope for the audience is two-fold. One, I hope that there’s a deep empathy felt for their fellow American, in terms of race and beyond. How are we caring for one another? How are we understanding one another? That’s the greatest gift theatre can give us—to allow us to better understand and connect with those who are different than us and see the similarities that unite us. I think this play does that in many ways. It challenges audiences to feel for the new friends they’ve just made.
I also hope it sparks even a tinge of activism and action in an audience. I hope it spurs the need to reevaluate and reexamine how gentrification, class, race, and history affect our present and our future. This play is about the challenges of progress. How do you move from the pain of the 60s into the potential hope of the 70s? I hope audiences realize the questions in the play are not just for 1969, but are questions that we can very much ask today. How do we learn from the mistakes of our past to build a better future that respects, uplifts, supports, and encourages all Americans’ hopes and dream? I hope people leave inspired to start figuring out that answer.
AN INTERVIEW WITH ACTRESS EBONI FLOWERS By Rachel Liff, Artistic Associate/Education Coordinator
RACHEL LIFF: How did you prepare for this production?
EBONI FLOWERS: For most productions, I enter the process with a clean slate and no definite decisions made. I like to simply read the play through once or twice, just to identify the themes and plot, and get some initial impressions.
RL: How would you describe Risa? What excites you about playing her?
EF: To keep it brief, Risa is a strong-willed, hardworking, reliable woman who has a lot of faith in God and not a lot of faith in men. I’m excited about adding layers to a character that is mostly seen and not heard. There’s not a whole lot of information about Risa’s story in the play, so it leaves a lot of room for me to make creative choices that help inform the audience of who she is in this world.
RL: Risa is the only woman seen onstage in Two Trains Running. Why do you think that is? How does it impact the dynamics of the piece?
EF: I read an article in which August Wilson was quoted as saying the following: “I am cautious in writing women characters; I am respectful of them as I would be of my mother. That is, I try to write honest women…but it’s very hard to put myself in their space. For instance, Risa in Two Trains Running…I couldn’t make it into some heavier interior psychology. Not that I didn’t want to, I guess, but I don’t know it.”
I think this particular story is illuminating the Black Male experience—their relationships to each other, the immediate community, the white community, money, God, and women. I think that some of the ways Black Men relate to Black Women is shown through these five men and their relationship to Risa, as well as their relationships to the other women they speak of in the play. Even though she is the only woman onstage, she’s not the only woman in the show. Amidst all of the male barbershop talk, there is also love fighting to be found.
RL: What is your relationship with August Wilson’s work? EF: This is my first August Wilson play as a professional actress. I’ve seen most of his plays staged and read all of them.
RL: Why do you think this play resonates in 2018?
EF: Two Trains Running is important now because we are still navigating a time and space where physically, mentally, emotionally, fiscally, and spiritually Black Male wellness and survival is at risk on a daily basis in this country. America is still the world leader in incarceration. Around 200,000 people were incarcerated in the 60’s and more than 2.2 million people are incarcerated today.
But in a broader sense, with gentrification and globalization, everyday mom-and-pop shops all over the county are finding themselves at risk of extinction by larger corporations. This play is set in a Black American community, so it tells that specific story, but it also tells a very all-American story, one that all American communities should be able to relate to in some way.
Reading List
Other Works by August Wilson
Fences
The Piano Lesson
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
Jitney
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Further Reading about Civil Rights and Segregation
Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America by Peniel E. Joseph, Holt Paperbacks, 2007
Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North by Thomas J. Sugrue, Random House, 2009
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein, Liveright, 2017
At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance--A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power by Danielle L. McGuire, Vintage, 2011
Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s Through the 1980s by Henry Hampton, Steve Fayer and Sarah Flynn, Bantam, 1991
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X, Penguin Books, 2007 (reprinted) Further Reading about Race in America
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, The New Press, 2012
I am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin, Vintage Books, 2017
Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin, Vintage Books, 2013
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Spiegel & Grau, 2015
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo, Seal Press, 2018
A Colony in a Nation by Chris Hayes, W. W. Norton & Company, 2017
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, Vintage Books, 1995
Beloved by Toni Morrison, Vintage Books, 2004 Other Plays about the Civil Rights Movement and Race in America
The Mountaintop by Katori Hall
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
Sweat by Lynn Nottage
An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World by Suzan-Lori Parks
Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
The Colored Museum by George C. Wolfe
Smart People by Lydia R. Diamond
Skeleton Crew by Dominique Morisseau Filmography
Fences directed by Denzel Washington, 2016
The Piano Lesson directed by Lloyd Richards, 1995
August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand directed by Sam Pollard, 2015 (PBS American Masters) Online Resources
https://www.americantheatre.org/2016/04/21/the-ground-on-which-he-stood-revisiting- august-wilsons-speech/