Directed by Tony Award nominee LaTanya Richardson Jackson (A Raisin In The Sun, To Kill A Mockingbird), who is making her Broadway directorial debut and will be the first woman to ever direct an August Wilson play on Broadway, this production will star Samuel L. Jackson (The Mountaintop), who originated the role of Boy Willie at Yale Rep in 1987,  as Doaker Charles, John David Washington as Boy Willie, and Antonyo Award winner and Tony nominee Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple) as Berniece. The Piano Lesson will begin performances on Monday, September 19, 2022, at the St. James Theatre.

“August Wilson dedicated his life and devoted his talent to dramatizing our stories and our experience. In doing so, he forever changed what it means to be Black in America. His plays built empathy, created community, and showed us the power of representation. The Piano Lesson is one of his most enduring, profound and consequential masterpieces, and I am reveling in this opportunity to present it to Broadway audiences for the first time since its premiere.”

LaTanya Richardson Jackson

The Piano Lesson is set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District in 1936.  A brother and sister are locked in a war over the fate of a family heirloom: a piano carved with the faces of their ancestors. Only by revisiting history can the siblings endeavor to move forward.

August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Piano Lesson is the fourth play in the American Century Cycle, which premiered at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1987, starring a then-39-year-old Samuel L. Jackson as Boy Willie. Three years later, a new production, starring Carl Gordon, Charles S. Dutton, and S. Epatha Merkerson, opened at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, and soon transferred to Broadway’s Walter Kerr Theatre. In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize for drama, The Piano Lesson won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play, the Peabody Award, and was nominated for the 1990 Tony Award for Best Play.

Producers Moreland (Thoughts of a Colored Man), Friedman (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), and Kirdahy (Hadestown) said:

“We are humbled and honored to return Mr. Wilson’s work to the Broadway stage under the inspirational LaTanya Richardson Jackson. After more than 30 years, The Piano Lesson is still adding to the ever-evolving conversation about family legacy. This production is coming back to Broadway at such an exciting time for our industry as we work to rebuild – and who better than Mr. Wilson to help us.”

Wilson’s American Century Cycle chronicles the Black experience throughout the 20^th Century over the course of ten plays – each set in a different decade. The Cycle consists of Jitney, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson, Two Trains Running, Seven Guitars, King Hedley II, Gem of the Ocean, and Radio Golf. The Cycle includes five New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award winners, two Pulitzer Prize winners, and a Tony Award-winning Best Play.

The St. James Theatre is owned and operated by Jujamcyn Theaters, who produced the original Broadway production of The Piano Lesson at their theatre, the Walter Kerr, in 1990. In 2005, Jujamcyn Theaters renamed the Virginia Theatre the “August Wilson Theatre” in honor of the Pulitzer-Prize winner. Additionally, their history with August Wilson goes back many years. Jujamcyn Theaters lead produced six original productions in Wilson’s Century Cycle, including the Broadway runs of The Piano Lesson (1990, Walter Kerr); Two Trains Running (1992, Walter Kerr); Seven Guitars (1996, Walter Kerr); King Hedley II (2001, formerly the Virginia, now the August Wilson); Gem of the Ocean (2004, Walter Kerr); and Radio Golf (2007, Cort).

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When his brother is shot, mentally disabled Langston Bellows (Gbenga Akinnagbe, The Wire) is left without a protector in Brooklyn’s housing projects. Now under the control of his abusive mother (Alfre Woodard, 12 Years A Slave) he must take his future into his own hands. Langston strives for independence from his prior life, from his mother, and from his fractured mind.

Woodard was last seen on Broadway in Regina Taylor’s Drowning Crow (the 2004 adaptation and updating of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull), opposite Anthony Mackie (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, A Behanding in Spokane), Aunjanue Ellis (Joe Turner’s Come And Gone, The Tempest), Ebony Jo-Ann (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Mule Bone, The Sunshine Boys, Gem of the Ocean), Stephen McKinley Henderson (King Hedley II, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences, A Raisin in the Sun), and Tracie Thoms (Rent, Stick Fly). She made her professional theatre debut in 1974 at Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage. Her breakthrough role came three years later (1977) in the off-Broadway production of Ntozake Shange’s classic for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf.

Alfre’s film and television career is vast and diverse. She won her Screen Actors Guild Award in 1995 for her work in the film version of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.

Knucklehead screens Thursday, March 26th at the Peter Jay Sharp Building BAM Rose Cinemas. To purchase tickets and get more information, CLICK HERE.

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