Wilson's "Piano Lesson' in New York

Four men sit around the kitchen table in a Pittsburgh row house. The year is 1936. They're talking about what black men always talk about in August Wilson plays "“ work, women, whiskey, and the white man.

Gradually, organically, one by one, they break into a chorus of "Alberta," a song traditionally sung by black Southern chain gang workers. It's a stirring song coming from the depth of the African-American soul, ringing out through centuries of suffering.

Wilson dedicated his life's work to chronicling the African-American experience, writing a play for each decade of the 20th Century before his untimely death in 2005. The Piano Lesson (Wilson's fourth play in the ten-play cycle, which opened in 1990) depicts the 1930s, a decade when black families were still separated, North from South.

Those who migrated North after the Emancipation strive to stabilize their lives through steady jobs and home owning. Meanwhile, their less fortunate Southern relatives are still struggling to survive.

Siblings, North and South

The Piano Lesson tells the story of two siblings divided by geography and circumstance. Berniece lives in the Pittsburgh home of her uncle, Doaker, a retired railroad worker. She's a proud young widow with a steady job as a cleaning lady, a daughter she raises with pride, a respectable suitor in the person of a local preacher, and a place in her community.

In contrast, her brother Boy Willie is still a Southern farmhand, leading a life of toil and hardship reminiscent of his family's past generations under slavery.

But Boy Willie, like Berniece, clings to his own dream. He has come up to Pittsburgh with a truckload of watermelons that he and his friend Lymon picked down South. He wants to sell those watermelons, with the hopes of buying a tract of land from his deceased employer's family.

When Boy Willie enters Doaker's house and sees the family's upright piano, he seizes upon the idea to sell it, thereby raising enough money to purchase the farmland down South. Therein lies the play's conflict— between the brother intent on selling the piano and the sister who will guard it with her life.

Fugitive from violence

For Berniece, the piano is their family's sole heirloom, the quintessential symbol of their pride as well as their suffering. Once it was owned by their ancestors' white masters, and now it's covered with carvings lovingly etched by Berniece and Boy Willie's great-grandfather, telling the story of their family's long history under slavery. Berniece recalls how their father lost his life acquiring the piano, and how their mother polished it for decades thereafter.

Indeed, the piano is now inhabited by a ghost who also haunts the rest of the house— a furious fugitive from their family's violent history and a constant reminder of their suffering. Although she's intent on improving her lot in life, Berniece doesn't want to forget the past.

Here is the essential recurring conflict in Wilson's ten plays: the struggle of African-Americans to define themselves while at the same time bringing the past forward with dignity. In this stellar production at the Signature, Ruben Santiago-Hudson"“ a friend of the late playwright and a frequent actor in his plays "“ directs a uniformly superb cast of actors (featuring Brandon and Jason Dirden) who embody these characters and their quest, which is ultimately their triumph.

The convict's song

In an August Wilson play, black identity expresses itself in music"“ whether it's the defiant "Alberta" or the song that Wining Boy, a family friend and musician, plays lovingly on the family piano in Act II. For Wilson, a "man's song" is his identity.

At Troy Maxson's funeral in Wilson's Fences, for example, Cory and Raynelle sit on the front stoop of their father's house, and together they sing "Old Dog Blue," an old minstrel song from the 19th Century that their father Troy taught them. They sing it in memory of a father who came up from the South as an ex-convict, played baseball for the "Negro leagues" (having been barred from the white ones), and worked steadily as a garbage collector in Pittsburgh's Hill District.

At times Troy was cruel, at times he was unfaithful— but he did what he had to do as a black man in the 1950s in Pittsburgh. He survived, he worked, and he supported his family.

By contrast, Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman had no song. He left his family only an insurance policy. "The man didn't know who he was," laments Willy's friend Charlie, at Willy's sparsely attended funeral.

Cory and Raynell sing their song with pride and conviction. Unlike Willy Loman's offspring, they know who their father was. And they know who they are.