More on August Wilson

I admit that when the OSF production of Gem of the Ocean started I wasn’t so sure I was going to like it. The somewhat generic set was unconvincing, and I was afraid the production would be as well. After all, I’d seen three of August Wilson's plays in his “Pittsburgh Cycle” in Pittsburgh, including the world professional theatre premiere of Jitney, where parts of the set weren’t just authentic reproductions of the Hill District setting—they were from the real location, including the actual neon sign. Perhaps the uniform color of the set at OSF (that Early American dark green you see in all the Early American malls) was necessary for the striking lighting effects later. In any case, within a few minutes it didn’t matter. The actors took over, and so did the magic of the play itself.

The music of August Wilson's plays was never stronger than in "Gem." Not just the blues music that had originally inspired him to acknowledge the reality of black life around him and find his own voice, but the music of his words.

August started out writing poetry, but when he began writing for the stage, one of his biggest problems was dialogue (if you can believe it.) So he asked a friend in Pittsburgh (Rob Penny), "How do you make them talk?" "You don't make them talk," Penny said. "You listen to them."

But it was only when he was away from Pittsburgh--living in St. Paul, Minnesota--that he began to hear them speaking, the characters who emerged from his Pittsburgh memories. And he really did listen--his plays began and proceeded for a long while just from what the characters told him. One character even emerged to demand that she have her own scene, which completely changed the play.

But as much as he picked up real black speech, it wasn't just that. It was August and his way with words and their music. In his remembrance after August's death in 2005, New York Times critic Ben Brantley quoted actor Charles S. Dutton, who starred in several of the Wilson plays, as observing that the dialogue is not strictly speaking the way black people speak. "It is a lingo that has an inherent rhythm of its own. Most of us have been black all our lives. But we kid each other about August's writing. We'll say, 'I've never heard anything in my life like that, have you?' "


The early action in "Gem" is triggered by an offstage act by a character we never see, who is accused of stealing a bucket of nails, and refuses to be arrested because he's innocent. Instead he dives into the river and refuses to come out, until he drowns.

August's plays often have such a character, who draws a line and stubbornly sticks to it, even when the principle seems trivial. Hambone in Two Trains Running, for example, who continues to demand the ham he believes he was promised for some work he did, nearly ten years before.

There are some roots to this in August's early life: once, when he was the home run hitter on a prep league baseball team, the coach tried to replace him at bat with his talentless son. August refused, walked off the field and was thrown off the team. When he was fifteen, the decision was even more consequential. A teacher (who was black) accused him of plagarizing a paper he wrote, because it was too good. August walked out of school and never went back. He continued his education on his own, at the main Carnegie Library in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, which was then very close to Forbes Field, where the Pittsburgh Pirates and Steelers played. Those glorious if faded rooms I know well have educated some other Pittsburgh literary figures, including critics Kenneth Burke and Malcolm Cowley.

This stubbornness over apparently small matters can have tragic consequences (as when Levee turns his misdirected rage to murdering a fellow band member for stepping on his shoes in "Ma Rainey") but it can also be at the moral center of these plays, and the black experience. In August's view, black people have been told they would have to assimilate into white culture, and give up their own culture, in order to succeed. But some have stubbornly refused--they insist on keeping their culture, whatever the cost--and he admits that the cost might be economic. But he stands with those who refuse to give up who they are, even though it looks self-destructive. That turns out to be a strong theme in his last play, Radio Golf.


At the center of Gem of the Ocean is a mystical reenactment of the voyage over the oceans made by countless African slaves. Those that died and were thrown overboard, as well as symbolically those who died needlessly in bondage, form the "City of Bones" at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, where one character in this play, and another in Joe Turner's Come and Gone, go to have their souls washed--that is, to be redeemed. But apart from Aunt Esther, the redeemer figure in this play is Solly Two Kings. He talks of blood, and sacrifices his, and his life, to save as many of his people as he can. Perhaps he's misguided in some of his acts, but he's clearly a redeemer and also a leader, the man with the staff, the Moses, too.

I'm sure white audiences will remember what he says about taking escaped slaves to "Freedomland" in Canada: "They got civilized people up there. I seen them. White as cotton. Got smiles on their faces. Shake your hand and say, 'Welcome.' I seen them. Don't never let nobody tell you there ain't no good white people. They got some good white people down here but they got to fight the law. In Canada they ain't got to fight the law.'"