Its 1936, and the two adult siblings of the Charles family cannot agree on what to do with a family heirloom: a piano that is hand-carved with the faces of their enslaved ancestors. General Management is by Foresight Theatrical. The Piano Lesson is a play about family history and heritage, and how best to honor that heritage. The design team for The Piano Lesson includes Tony Award winner Beowulf Boritt (Set Design), Tony Award nominee Toni-Leslie James (Costume Design), Tony Award nominee Japhy Weideman (Lighting Design), Tony Award winner Scott Lehrer (Sound Design), Drama Desk Award nominee Cookie Jordan (Wig Design), Tony Award nominee Jeff Snug (Projection Design), Tony Award winner Jason Michael Webb (Music & Music Direction), Otis Sallid (Choreographer). Like other Wilson plays, The Piano Lesson seems to sing even when it is talking.” The Piano Lesson, wrote Frank Rich in The New York Times, “has its own spacious poetry, its own sharp angle on a nation’s history, its own metaphorical idea of drama and its own palpable ghosts that roar right through the upstairs window of the household where the action unfolds.

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. The Piano Lesson is set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District in 1936. 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. Epatha Merkerson, opened at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, and soon transferred to Broadway’s Walter Kerr Theatre. Three years later, a new production, starring Carl Gordon, Charles S. Jackson as Boy Willie, is the fourth play in the American Century Cycle. A brother and sister are locked in a war over the fate of a family heirloom: a piano carved with. August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, which premiered at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1987 and starred a then-39-year-old Samuel L. The Piano Lesson Broadway in 2022 - The Piano Lesson is set in Pittsburghs Hill District in 1936.

Broadway the piano lesson