The Dialectics of August Wilson's Piano Lesson

Abstract

As the preeminent American playwright of our current technological age, August Wilson suffers from overexposure. The print media documents each of his premieres and performances in detail. His own observations about his plays, about the American theatre, about social change for African Americans receive additional coverage and have made him a site of controversy and complexity. With the opening o? Jitney (1979 revised 1998) in New York?his seventh work to win the New York Drama Critics Circle award?an article by Wilson entitled, Sailing the Black Stream of Culture graced the front page of the Sunday New York Times Arts Section, 23 April 2000. Three weeks later, as his most recent drama, King Hedley II (2000), opened at the Huntington Theatre in Boston, an interview with Wilson appeared in the Sunday Boston Globe, 14 May 2000. The documentation of and critical fascination with Wilson extends to the creation of a plethora of websites dedicated to his dramaturgy. Fences, his first Pulitzer Prize-winning play, is even required reading in high schools across the country with accompanying study guides. With so much information generated in mainstream publications and venues, with the readily available insights of Wilson himself on his creative production and processes, where is the place for and of the drama critic and scholar? Why are close readings of his work necessary, or do they just further add to the clutter and overdetermination?