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Despite my interest in history, I have always been more concerned with culture, and while my plays have an overall historical feel, their settings are fictions, and they are peopled with invented characters whose personal histories fit within the historical context in which they live.
I have tried to extract some measure of truth from their lives as they struggle to remain whole in the face of so many things that threaten to pull them asunder. I am not a historian. I happen to think that the content of my mother's life-her myths, her superstitions, her prayers, the contents of her pantry, the smell of her kitchen, the song that escaped from her sometimes parched lips, her thoughtful repose and pregnant laughter-are all worthy of art.
Hence, Seven Guitars.
- August Wilson
Signature Theatre Company opens The August Wilson Series with Seven Guitars, the fifth chronological play in Wilson's ten-play cycle that chronicles the African-American experience in the twentieth century. Ruben Santiago-Hudson directs. The play, set in 1948, follows the final days of blues musician Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton among a close-knit group of friends and neighbors in the backyard of a house in Pittsburgh's Hill District. All but one of Wilson's cycle plays are set in this neighborhood where he was born and raised; by the 1940s and 1950s the community was one of the most prosperous thriving black neighborhoods in the United States, primarily comprised of influential steelworkers, businessmen, commercial proprietors, and, of course, blues and jazz musicians. Told through flashback following Floyd's funeral, Seven Guitars unfolds as Floyd's hit recording of the blues classic "That's All Right" has positioned him on the verge of stardom.
Seven Guitars premiered on Broadway in 1996 under the direction of Wilson's longtime collaborator, Lloyd Richards. On its way to New York, the production had followed what had become their standard method of working together; the play first received a workshop and staged readings at the National Playwrights Conference of the O'Neill Theater Center, where Richards was artistic director, then received several productions at regional theatres around the country as Wilson continued to rewrite. Santiago-Hudson, who has an estimable career as an actor and originated the role of Canewell in that production, recently described the process this way: "Lloyd Richards afforded August a great opportunity to let the play develop throughout a long process of different stops. He also allowed ownership to the actors who were filling out each role; you had a long journey to grow into that role and actually define some of who that character is." The Broadway production also starred Rosalyn Coleman, Keith David, Viola Davis, Tommy Hollis, Roger Robinson, and Michele Shay. The design team included Scott Bradley (sets), Christopher Akerlind (lights), Constanza Romero (costumes), and Tom Clark (sound). The play was nominated for eight Tony Awards that season, including Best Play, and Santiago-Hudson earned the Tony for Best Featured Actor in a Play. Seven Guitars won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best New Play, 1995-1996.
The play highlights Wilson's deep connection to music; he loved many different kinds, but the blues were by far his favorite and one of the most important inspirations to his artistry. He once explained: "My discovery of the blues in 1965 was the last piece in the puzzle of my education. With the blues I had discovered the mythology, history and social organization of the culture I had learned at my mother's knee." In Seven Guitars, Hedley, who lives in the house, constantly sings "Buddy Bolden's Blues," evoking legendary musician Charles "Buddy" Bolden, the New Orleans cornet player often credited with originating jazz by evolving ragtime and the blues. And while the play takes place in the Hill District, Floyd and his fellow musicians Canewell and Red Carter have recently returned from Chicago, where a thriving blues music scene was reaching its peak, led by legendary musicians such as Muddy Waters.
Santiago-Hudson shares Wilson's passion for blues music with a fervor equal to his reverence for Wilson's writing. He elaborated on his attraction to both in a conversation during rehearsals for the Signature production of Seven Guitars: "The blues was stolen from nowhere. It just came out. It was a need to cry out. Same as August's writing: a need to cry out, to scream out about something. And it's the beauty, power, and integrity of the African-American people. You know, August and I had the same rhythms. And we always talked about it because he got his education in the shoeshine parlor, the cigarette store, the restaurant. I lived in the shoeshine parlor, the cigarette store and the restaurant. So all the rhythms he heard are all the rhythms I heard, so when we got married together as artists, it was easy for that marriage to happen. One of the things that's required to do August Wilson's plays is knowing the music. When I say the music, I mean the words, the poetry. The music is in the words: tempo, pace, style, you know, it's all in the words."
Other discourse by August Wilson on the blues concurs. "The blues contain the cultural responses of blacks in America," he once said in an interview. "Contained in the blues is a philosophical system at work. You get the ideas and attitudes of people as part of the oral tradition. This is a way of passing along information, and it is sanctioned by the community in the sense that if someone sings the song, other people sing the song… I began to understand the fact that the avenues for participation in society were closed to these people...The mere fact that they were able to make music was a testament to the resiliency of their spirit. I began to see a value in their lives that I simply hadn't seen before. I discovered a beauty and nobility in their struggle to survive."
Santiago-Hudson also spoke to the importance of revisiting Seven Guitars and Wilson's body of work: "August Wilson is unparalleled-nobody has chronicled any people's existence in this country-the turmoil, and the magnificence, and the brilliance, and the perseverance-not the way August did it. For me, as an African-American man, a Latino man, a person of color-no one speaks to me the way he speaks. And there's generations who haven't heard this voice. We have to educate audiences that have never heard or witnessed August Wilson, and that's the great thing about this Signature Theatre Company season of $15 tickets-now we're educating a new audience. Not only that, we have to reeducate those who have heard it, and let them hear it in a different way. August writes real representations of their ancestors and their people, and their families, and who they are. That's what's important. That's August Wilson."
Signature is excited to welcome back a number of accomplished collaborators to join Santiago-Hudson in bringing the play to life in the Peter Norton Space. Returning are set designer Richard Hoover (Lanford Wilson's Fifth of July); sound designer Darron West (Paula Vogel's The Oldest Profession and Hot 'N' Throbbing); fight director Rick Sordelet (Hot 'N' Throbbing, and John Guare's Bosoms and Neglect and Landscape of the Body); and Jane Cox, who designed lighting for Urban Zulu Mambo and recently collaborated with Santiago-Hudson on a production of Gem of the Ocean that played the McCarter Theatre and American Conservatory Theatre. Signature welcomes costume designer Karen Perry and music director and composer Bill Sims Jr., who also collaborated on Gem of the Ocean at the McCarter. Completing the creative team are Valerie Gladstone, wig designer, and Matthew Skoller, harmonica coach, who created music for the Chicago premiere of Seven Guitars and coached Santiago-Hudson for the Broadway production. In the cast, Kevin Carroll returns to Signature after appearing in Sleep Deprivation Chamber in the Adrienne Kennedy season, and Signature welcomes newcomers Cassandra Freeman, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Brenda Pressley, Lance Reddick, Roslyn Ruff, and Charles Weldon.
Signature is pleased to have both these first-timers and former colleagues of August Wilson to create this new production of Seven Guitars on Signature's intimate stage. On the first day of rehearsal, Founding Artistic Director James Houghton spoke to August Wilson's absence: "This is the first time at Signature we've presented a season without the writer present physically. We mourn the loss of this great artist, and now also his esteemed collaborator, director Lloyd Richards. We all have the responsibility to carry on the tradition of their work." Santiago-Hudson closed with a few more words on August Wilson: "Just in natural entertainment value, he's unsurpassed, and then in celebration of people of African descent, he's unsurpassed. There's just so many reasons to do August Wilson from now until there's no more earth. He speaks to something inside a lot of people. I know Shakespeare's sacred to a lot of people. August is equally as sacred to me."
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