Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T09:19:57.329Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - A piano and its history: family and transcending family

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2008

Christopher Bigsby
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Get access

Summary

What time or period is the setting for The Piano Lesson (1987)? That was the first question asked by the late great Chinese actor and director Ying Ruocheng (1921-2003) after he read the play in 1991. The question surprises those who know that each play in August Wilson's ten-play cycle depicting African American experience is set in a different decade of the twentieth century. If the historical period is part of the basic concept underlying each play, the temporal setting should be evident. Indeed, a stage production communicates the time of the action to the spectator almost immediately through period-specific details like the appliances in the kitchen and the dresses the women wear. Wilson's printed text, however, is curiously reticent in conveying such information. The reader of the play does have an advantage over the theatre spectator. He or she can pause and calculate, as Ying eventually did, using the data woven into Doaker's story about the piano. Doaker's older brother, Boy Charles, 'would have been fifty-seven if he had lived. He died in 1911 when he was thirty-one years old.' If the action of the play occurs twenty-six years after 1911, it must be 1936 or 1937.

A reference to 1930s America usually conjures images of the Great Depression: breadlines, Hoovervilles, the Dust Bowl, WPA projects. That Wilson sets his play in the latter part of the decade and hoists none of those cultural flags is surely deliberate. The economic depression of the 1930s hit hardest those who had bought into the prosperity of the 1920s, but African Americans - not having experienced much, if any, of that prosperity - moved into the 1930s under already familiar financial constraints. The view from inside the Charles home in Pittsburgh is one of cultural continuity; there is no reason for them to talk about changes that affect people outside their culture.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×