The Piano Lesson The Piano Lesson

The Piano Lesson

    • 4.3 • 46 Ratings
    • $6.99
    • $6.99

Publisher Description

The revival of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play starring Samuel L. Jackson, Danielle Brooks, and John David Washington is now on Broadway!

Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, this modern American classic is about family, and the legacy of slavery in America.


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 perhaps his most haunting and dramatic work.

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.

GENRE
Arts & Entertainment
RELEASED
1990
December 1
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
144
Pages
PUBLISHER
Penguin Publishing Group
SELLER
PENGUIN GROUP USA, INC.
SIZE
1.6
MB

Customer Reviews

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Where Have I Been?

If this were introduced to me 10 years ago, I would be a different man. August uses similar archetypes and overall, the story journeys a similar path to that of his other known work. This however, for some reason, has opened my eyes to August’s mind in a new way. The language is sticky creating a thick and palpable atmosphere you cannot escape even when you put the book down. Hands down, my top 3 so far. I am a novice to his work however, so please do not take my word for it.

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