Image for The piano lesson

The piano lesson

by Wilson August.

Synopsis

August Wilson has already given the American theater such spell-binding plays about the black experience in 20th-century America as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Fences. In his second Pulitzer Prize-winner, The Piano Lesson, Wilson has fashioned his most haunting and dramatic work yet.

At the heart of the play stands the ornately carved upright piano which, as the Charles family's prized, hard-won possession, has been gathering dust in the parlor of Berniece Charles's Pittsburgh home. When Boy Willie, Berniece's exuberant brother, bursts into her life with his dream of buying the same Mississippi land that his family had worked as slaves, he plans to sell their antique piano for the hard cash he needs to stake his future. But Berniece refuses to sell, clinging to the piano as a reminder of the history that is their family legacy. This dilemma is the real "piano lesson," reminding us that blacks are often deprived both of the symbols of their past and of opportunity in the present.

Available format(s):

Classic Audio

Log in to read

What's an Audio Format

Book Information

Copyright year 1990
ISBN-13 9780452265349
ISBN-10 0452265347
Class Copyright
Publisher Plume
Subject DRAMA
File Size 0 MB
Number of Pages 113
Shelf No. JC137
Grade Range 12 - 12
Ages 18 - 99
Lexile NPL
Curriculums HMH Into Literature Trademarks