A Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, The Piano Lesson is the story of a family haunted by the living legacy of American slavery. At the center of this play is an old, upright piano, hand carved to depict the family history-an unofficial plantation marriage, birth, funeral, and the removal of two slaves from Mississippi to Georgia. The figures carved in the piano create a keepsake album, a sacred relic, a repository of family lore. The piano now sits in the salon of the Charles home and is very valuable. For Bernice, it holds the spirit of her grandparents, sold away in exchange for it during slavery. For her brother, Boy Willie, it holds the key to his freedom from the burden of sharecropping for a meager wage. The struggle between the siblings over the symbolic and literal value of the piano escalates into a conflict that threatens to tear the family apart.
       
 Starring Ansa Akyea (Boy Willie), Lerea Carter (Grace), James Craven (Doaker),
Natalia Gaston (Maretha), Greta Oglesby (Berniece), T. Mychael Rambo (Avery),
Dennis W. Spears (Wining Boy), and Ashford Thomas (Lymon).
|
