slides with context on August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle and the play, Gem of the Ocean

1. August Wilson, Gem of the Ocean

2. Images from Boston University Theatre
Production, September 24 – October 30‚ 2004

3. Lizan Mitchell (left) as Aunt Esther and Kim Staunton as
Black Mary in Gem of the Ocean, Pittsburgh Public Theater
production in June 2006.

4. August Wilson (1945-2005)
• Raised in Hill District, Pittsburgh, PA
• Born Frederick August Kittel
• Took mother’s last name at age 20:
– Mother—walked from N. Carolina to Pgh. Wilson:
“I grew up in my mother’s household in a cultural
environment which was black.”
– Father: Frederick Kittel, a German baker, not
around much.
– Catholic upbringing
• High school dropout—insulted by teacher
who doubted his ability
• (questioned whether he’d written a 20-page paper
on Napoleon)
• Educated himself in the Carnegie Library,
Hill District branch on Wylie Ave.
– Note: 1839 Wylie Ave. is Aunt Esther’s address

5. “Labor historians do
not speak well of
Andrew Carnegie. .
.but he will forever
be for me that man
who made it all
possible for me to
be standing here
today. . .I wore out
my library card and
cried when I lost
it.”
–August
Wilson
“Pittsburgh is a very hard city, especially if you’re
black.”
“I grew up without a father. When I was 20, I went
down onto Centre Avenue to learn from the community
how to be a man.” --August Wilson
•Adopts black urban identity experienced in diners,
street corners. Local neighborhood identity, stimulated
by black cultural movements of 1960s.
•Starts writing poetry, 1965. First plays, 1970s.

6. • Away from Pittsburgh, looking back on it,
writing plays about it:
– St. Paul, Minnesota (1980s)
– Seattle, Washington (1990s)
“Like most people, I have this sort of love-hate relationship with Pittsburgh.
This is my home and at times I miss it and find it tremendously exciting,
and other times I want to catch the first thing out that has wheels.” –
August Wilson, 1994
• “August Wilson Country”= the Hill District,
setting for most of his plays
• Wilson’s ten-play Pittsburgh cycle: (9/10s
set in Hill District)

7. Wilson’s Advocacy
of “Black” Theater
• August Wilson vs. Robert Brustein public debates,
1997. Wilson’s points:
– Plays by and about blacks should not be played and
produced for white-owned theaterswrong audience!
– Need more black-owned theaters!
– Theater not about “timeless” values of Greek tragedy.
» (Brustein claims that good theater is beyond social issues
like race and politics—it asserts timeless, ancient values. In
his eyes, no need for a separate “black” theater.)
– Instead, theater is for community-building, community
memory
– Fundraising needed for opening black theaters in black
neighborhoods

8. Pittsburgh’s Hill District
• 1870s-80s: draws
mixture of ethnic groups,
immigrants (Poles,
Greeks, Jews, Syrians)
• 1890s: promise of
industry draws blacks
from South
(Urban Migration)

9. Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle
• Epic cycle of plays re Black American experience
• Each play set in a distinct decade of the 20th
century
• Hill district as central point of black cultural memory for
Wilson.
• Plays raise major historical issues in black experience:
– slavery,
– distant cultural memories of Middle Passage,
– Industry labor issues
– black baseball leagues
– 1990s transformations in Hill district neighborhood
• All except Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom set in Hill District.
– (Ma Rainey = first play written in the cycle, re blues singer, set in Chicago
recording studio)

10. • Aunt Ester
character
connects these
plays:
– Ancient woman spiritual
leader, believed to be
born in 1619 (year the
first black slaves are
shipped to Virginia
colony).
– Identity of Aunt Ester
passed down from
woman to woman over
generations

11. Pittsburgh Cycle Plays
(in order of historical setting)
1. Gem of the Ocean, set 1904 (staged 2004)
• Only play to feature Aunt Ester on stage
1. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, set 1911 (staged 1988)
• Re urban migration. Like Gem, features a City of Bones sequence
1. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, set 1927 (staged 1984)
• Free-spirited blues singer Ma Rainey in Chicago
1. The Piano Lesson, set 1936 (staged 1990)
• Family debates over purchasing old South plantation grounds. Material artifact of a piano recalls
days of slavery, as it was once used to purchase a slave.
1. Seven Guitars, set 1948 (staged 1996)
• Murder mystery—death of an exuberant black jazz singer
1. Fences, set late 1950s/early 1960s (staged 1987)
• Downfall of a former Negro League baseball star, after league disbanded
1. Two Trains Running, set 1969 (staged 1992)
• Diner culture in 1960s Hill District
1. Jitney, set 1977 (staged 2000)
• Cabdrivers and murder—black cabs vs. white cabs
1. King Hedley II, set 1985 (staged 2001)
• Doomed ambition of Hill District native—spinning wheels
1. Radio Golf, set 1997 (staged 2005)
• Black prosperous middle class repopulate the Hill: Danger of destroying the Wylie Ave. house
that used to be Aunt Ester’s

12. Gem of the Ocean
• Aunt Ester’s house (w/ Eli, Black Mary): spiritual
sanctuary
– Eli’s wall
• Solly Two Kings, his “pure,” and his stick
– Names and their significance
– Solly, Caesar, Citizen, Ester
• Caesar’s view of blacks in Pittsburgh
• Citizen Barlow’s guilt
• Pittsburgh background, offstage:
– Garrett Brown’s burial by Revd. Tolliver
– Industry/job issues: blacks vs. other ethnic minorities
• Strike, closing the mill
• Mill burning down