
That production won four Lucille Lortel Awards and two Obie Awards. The play was revived off Broadway in 2012, directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson and starring Chuck Cooper and Brandon J. That year, the show received five Tony nominations, including Best Play, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The cast from the Chicago production stayed on for the premiere of The Piano Lesson on Broadway in 1990.

The Piano Lesson premiered in 1987 at Yale Repertory Theatre in Connecticut, followed by productions at Boston's Huntington Theatre Company and Chicago's Goodman Theatre. The Cycle is a collection of 10 plays, each set during a different decade of the 20th century, exploring Black life in the titular Pennsylvania city. Get tickets to The Piano Lesson on Broadway on TodayTix now.Īugust Wilson wrote The Piano Lesson as the fourth play in his Pittsburgh Cycle. With a starry cast, plenty of family drama, and a touch of the supernatural, The Piano Lesson hits all the right notes of a thrilling production. Set in 1936 Pittsburgh, the play unfolds over a series of seven scenes in which the past and present collide. But Berniece wants to keep the piano, even though she's reluctant to play it. Willie wants to sell it and use the money to buy the land where their enslaved ancestors once worked. In the play, Boy Willie (Washington) and Berniece (Brooks) are two adult siblings in a disagreement over what to do with their treasured family heirloom, a hand-carved piano. The Piano Lesson is a play about family history: what to keep, what to let go of, how to tell one's history to future generations, and the best way to honor one's ancestors.

This Pulitzer Prize-winning play about legacy and memory is more relevant than ever in a time when history is being reevaluated and reexamined through different and often-overlooked perspectives, And if you loved Wilson's work on screen, such as in the film adaptations of his plays Fences and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, now's your chance to see one of his works on stage, as it was meant to be seen.

These celebrated actors play a family haunted by the ghosts of their past as they figure out how to forge their future. Jackson ( Pulp Fiction), Tony and Emmy nominee Danielle Brooks ( Orange Is the New Black), and Golden Globe nominee John David Washington ( BlacKkKlansman) together on stage in August Wilson's gripping drama.

Get The Piano Lesson tickets on TodayTix.ĭon't miss Oscar winner Samuel L. See an all-star cast lead the first revival of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson on Broadway this fall.
