Wednesday

Compose a single, full, handwritten page in response to one question from the group you are assigned to. Be ready to share it with others during the next class. Bring it on paper, not posted to this site. As you answer, remember that characters in a play are tools in the hands of the playwright. He uses them to accomplish his purposes. Give your response plenty of TEXTure. Let’s start with the idea that one of the play’s primary themes is the importance of history to the future of a people.

1. Avery, who is from Mississippi like the Charles family takes to the city “like a fish to water,” according to the stage directions on page 22.  First, he wants to be a preacher, but also he presently has a job operating an elevator. Comment on the role of Avery with special attention to the suggestiveness of his day job, and then continue to evaluate his role, function, and purpose within the play. (Hunter, Morgan, Justin)
2. Reread Wining Boy’s story on page 63 that relates him in some way to Lymon. Was it a good choice to leave this speech out of the movie version? How does its absence change the play and its ramifications? (Rebekah, Kendall, Sydnee)
3. Why does Sutter’s ghost haunt the Charles family? Why does he show up when Boy Willie moves the piano, when Berniece attacks Boy Willie over Crawley’s death, and when Avery tries to exorcise it? How about his appearances to Doaker? And why does he leave when he does? What powers come into play? How is all that connected to Berniece’s history and the power of history? (Dara, Quay, Leo)
4. What do both The Piano Lesson and Beloved say about history and making a start? (Abigail)
5. Wining Boy plays the piano enthusiastically. Maretha plays it as a novice. Why do their songs (even Wining Boy’s song “in MEMORY of Cleotha”) have no effect on the ghost? (Natalie, Meagan, Rebecca)
6. Why is Sutter so interested in keeping that piano where it is? Consider Boy Willie’s hopes and Berniece’s final use of the piano. (Victoria, Daniel O, Quay)
7. The play makes the juxtaposition clear: first comes Avery (starting on page 65); then comes Boy Willie and Grace (what a name, huh? starting on page 72); and then comes Lymon (starting on page 75). Observe Berniece’s reactions to each situation – each with implications about Berniece’s attitudes toward intimacy or sexuality – and comment on those reactions. What do Berniece’s reactions have to do with the larger thematic unity of the play? (Patrick, Eve-liina, Jesse
8. Why do so many aspects of Boy Willie’s and Lymon’s characters remain unexplained? (Did either of them help kill Sutter? Whose truck is it? Did they steal the watermelons or the truck? Consider these things especially in light of Boy Willie’s apparent strong tendencies toward integrity about his intentions). (Kelcey, Dee, Katie)
9. ON page 70, Berniece says, “Sometimes late at night I could hear my mama talking to them. I said that wasn’t gonna happen to me.” On page 91, Boy Willie speaks about his father’s hands. The movie changes the lines to say, after Boy Willie imagines Boy Charles saying, “I got these big old hands but what I’m gonna do with them?” to read, “I ain’t gonna be like that.” Comment on that change and the way it alters the play to have both Charles children saying they are not going to be like their parents. (Samuel, Daniel, Shelly)
10. ON page 88, Boy Willie makes a speech about death. It was not included in the movie version. Say you are the director of the movie. Explain to August Wilson why that speech must be cut and how you think it will better preserve the integrity of the play. (Maddison, Dale, Gabe)
11. Reread pages 90-93. See the argument between Berniece and Boy Willie over Maretha’s future. Decide whose case has the better merit: Boy Willie’s or Berniece’s, and convince us that you are right. (Berniece’s last words to Maretha here before wheeling on Boy Willie are “Hold your head up!”) (Alexis, Jawaun)
12. Why does Grace run away on page 103? Think interpretively. She is a tool in the hands of a playwright. What is her function and role in accomplishing his purposes? (Jeb, Sam, Yarhiel)
13. Comment on Doaker’s railroad speech on page 18 and his words on page 45 that Boy Charles “didn’t know they was gonna come down there and stop the train.” How are these two speeches to be reconciled? Do they express a problem Wilson attempts to address? (Loftin, Justin H, Sam)
14. What is The Piano Lesson? (Will, Preston)