August Wilson

Last week, Anne and I got last minute tickets to see Joe Turner's Come and Gone right before I went into tech.  Simply put, it's an extraordinary production.  And this got me to thinking about the different production choices (which is to say, different directorial approaches) I've seen applied to Wilson's work over the years.

I've seen half of the 20th Century Cycle (Radio Golf, King Hedley II, Two Trains Running, Seven Guitars, Joe Turner's Come and Gone).  Seven guitars I've seen in three different productions; the rather moribund (to my mind) Lloyd Richards production, the gorgeous Thomas W. Jones production in DC and the hyper-naturalistic Ruben Santiago-Hudson production at Signature.

I think, looking back at these seven different experiences of Wilson's work that it provides somewhat unique challenges for a director.  First off is Wilson's use of archetypal characters.  This can be hard to spot  at times because some of the archetypes he uses are purely of his own invention (this is somewhat similar to the way artists like Anselm Kiefer create symbology that is entirely private yet somehow still resonates).  He also mixes and matches his archetypal qualities.  For example, Sterling in Two Trains Running combines both the Angry Young Seeker dimensions of Harold Loomis and the young romantic male qualities of Jeremy Furlow, both of whom appear in Joe Turner.  Harold Loomis is of course echoed in Hedley II by Hedley.  Bynum Walker from Joe Turner, as the Elder Mystic is echoed both by Hedley I in Seven Guitars and by Aunt Esther herself in Gem of the Ocean.

And many of Wilson's plays contain a scene that Anne and I like to call the "I Got What You Need" scene.  Joe Turner actually has three of them.  The scene goes like this:

Young Black Man: I got what you need.

Young Black Woman: You think you got what I need?

YBM: Yes. I got what you need. A woman needs X, Y and Z. I got those things. You want to come away with/set up with me?

YBW: You think you got what I need. You don't know what i need.

This scene generally ends with the YBM and the YBW ending up together. 

Approaching archetypes and turning them into fully-fleshed-out characters is a tricky deal. it's an even trickier deal when approaching Wilson's female characters, as in general they're pretty underdeveloped. It's almost as if in order to be in one of his plays, you have to read most of them and figure out what the rules of your particular archetype are and then make them human or something. 

The second real challenge is how as a director to handle the lyrical/musical and magical elements of the play. This is otherwise known as the How Realistic Should The Production Be? question. Some of Wilson's plays (Two Trains Running comes to mind) benefit from the realistic take.  Others, like Seven Guitars most certainly do not. The script is so overtly musical that a realistic take on it is the wrong container.  The text and the performances keep wanting to break out of the tightly lidded bottle.  Or, at any rate, that was my reaction to Ruben Santiago-Hudson's production which while quite good never quite got the explosive quality that Wilson at his best can provide. The Thomas W. Jones production in DC, on the other hand, was a revelation. It was like great jazz, balancing the poetic elements with a need to stay rooted in the real world.

  Bart Sher's overtly magical and aggressively poetic take on Joe Turner is essential to its success. The play in many ways is a grab-back of Wilsonian theatrical devices and moments, it has raw materials in it that he built whole plays out of elsewhere and while I think its one of Wilson's best plays, it's also one his most jam packed as quite possibly his messiest.  By fully realizing the moments of "magic realism" and by taking such a poetic approach to the show, Sher keeps the audience in a world where you are not expecting dramaturgical tidiness, and the moment where the play ascends into pure imagery at the end of the show is a breathtaking realization of the text's themes.  That said, other than Gem of the Ocean, I'm not sure how many of Wilson's plays would benefit from such an aggressively stylized take on the material. My guess is, with Wilson's widow making it clear that she sees her mandate as getting Wilson's work out there so it can be re-analyzed and re-experienced and re-regarded, we'll see a lot of different attempts to figure out the right theatrical environment for his words.

Comments

[James]

I agree. My friend Marsha and I went to go see the show last Wednesday. Really engaging and captivating from beginning to end.