August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson" was the 1990 Pulitzer Prize winner for drama, and concerned a brother and a sister arguing about whether or not they should sell their family piano. August Wilson (born April 27, 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is a Pulitzer Prize winning American playwright, who has achieved widespread acclaim for his stage plays, which focus primarily on the African American experience in the 20th century. ... Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-04-13, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ...
The piano placed to her satisfaction she hovers near it, one hand in constant touch of it while her daughter grips her free hand.
Exasperated by the threatened incarceration she shakes her head with anguish and moving to the piano lifts the lid and plays several bars brutally and strongly.
The piano and her shoe continue their fall while ADA floats above, suspended in the deep water, then suddenly her body awakes and fights, struggling upwards to the surface.
In The PianoLesson, however, Wilson traces the play's historical complications back three generations, to an incident in the family's slave legacy that has left them to face the present in terms of a history that, seventy-five years later, is not just personal, but communal and familial.
The fulcrum of the conflict is the piano.
In The PianoLesson, Boy Willie is never able to take charge of his own narrative; every move he makes in his attempt to escape the legacy with which he has been left is made in response to the mythology of the piano.
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