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Many plays have passed the audiences eyes with no recognition. There are some plays which most people do not remember. There are plays about cats, dogs and most anything one can think up. There are also plays which try to send a hidden meaning to the audience. There are plays which are covers for a real purpose of wasting an audiences time. More importantly, there are good plays.
As the 1990 winner of the Pulitzer Prize, The Piano Lesson, by August Wilson, stands out as one of the greatest plays of the 20 th century. August Wilson uses many tricks and techniques in order to keep the audiences attention and to appeal to the average man. The Piano Lesson contains qualities of mystery plays, thrillers, emotional dramas, and comedies. WONDERFULSEAT-EDGINGLY THEATRICAL, THRILLINGLY DRAMATIC, EXTRAORDINARILY FUNNY. (Barnes, 5) The Piano Lesson also takes use of the meticulous characterization of roles in the play. It begins in the little how town of Pittsburgh.
Immediately, Wilson gets the audiences attention with an unexpected visitor. Boy Willie: (Off stage, calling. ) Hey Doaker Doaker! (He knocks again and calls. ) (Doaker enters from his room. He is a tall, thin man of forty-seven, with severe features, who has for all intents and purposes retired from the world though he works full-time as a railroad cook. ) Doaker: Who is it? Boy Willie: Open the door, n Its me Boy Willie! Doaker: Who?
Boy Willie: Boy Willie! Open the door! (Wilson, 1) This opening gets the audience into the craze of asking whats happening? This ability to put the viewers at a state of constant mystery is one technique used to keep the audience from getting bored. This play keeps the audience on the edge of their seats with questions.
Who killed Sutter? Where is the piano from? Why is the piano so important? Why is Berniece so attached to the piano? This mystery drama technique not only serves as an attention grabber, it allows the audience to get hooked on the play.
Mystery dramas have learned to use this technique for many years. The mystery drama was around before Sherlock Holmes, all the way to present day. One advantage of the mystery drama is that it applies to everyone: male, female, old and young. August Wilsons play uses the mystery act by never truly announcing the purpose of the piano until Wining Boy and Doaker explain its purpose near the end of the novel.
This act of leaving out the purpose of the piano simply makes the audience do some sleuthing in order to find out its purpose. Nevertheless, The Piano Lesson is not as extreme a mystery drama as such books as Sir Arthur Conan Doyles collections. August Wilson also adds the needed bit of thrill to his play. Scenes that attain the audiences attention through fights, apparitions, or the occasional banishing of spirits from a haunted house, are examples of thrills. The Piano Lesson contains all of these. AVERY: (Continuing) A new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone, and I will give you a heart of flesh.
And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. (There are loud sounds heard from upstairs as BOY WILLIE begins to wrestle with Sutter's GHOST. It is a life-and death struggle fraught with perils and faultless terror. BOY WILLIE is thrown down the stairs. AVERY is stunned into silence. BOY WILLIE picks himself up and dashes back upstairs. ) (Wilson, 106) The usage of thrills periodically, but more intensive at the end of the play, shows great ability to grasp the audiences attention. By hinting at the final conflict between Sutter's Ghost and the Charles family throughout the play, Wilson is able to not only mystify his audience but give them bone chilling goose bumps as they are thrilled by an apparitional fight.
Exorcising these terrors takes more than a Bible and holy water, as Wilson's characters discover. (Rou suck, On-line) More apparent than the mystery and the thriller techniques is the manipulation of the audiences emotions. This play uses and abuses the audiences ability to feel. Throughout the play, a sense of bonding between Berniece and the piano is evident. There is also a sense of hate for Boy Willie by Berniece.
It is not enough to just show this quality, the audience must be able to feel it. Wilson achieves this via strong acting and an absence of words. Sometimes it is the non-descriptive quotes which are the strongest. In Act One Scene two Berniece repeatedly tells Boy Willie, He aint here (Wilson, 54), referring to the death of her husband. It is the repetition and lack of descriptive words which makes the audience feel the pain that Berniece feels. In Act two Scene five, Berniece's originally verbose lines seem to disappear after the first couple of pages.
It is her silence which makes the audience feel what this imaginary character feels. On the lighter side, The Piano Lesson also contains comedy. What would a play be without a little comedy now and then? The Piano Lesson offers lots of humor. (Whaley, Online) For instance, some may consider Boy Willies comment of how fat Sutter was, to be funny. Others might find it hilarious to observe normal house-hold activities taking place, only to be interrupted by sibling brawls. And others still might find Boy Willies commentary along with Lyons responses to resemble that of a stand up comics.
BOY WILLIE: You telling me Im gonna hide and wait till I catch him looking down his well just right then Im gonna run over and push him in. A great big old three-hundred-and-forty-pound man. LYMON: The Ghosts of the Yellow Dog pushed him. Thats what the people say. (Wilson, 14 - 15) Wilson's dialogue is masterly and his characters are people to care about. (Whaley, Online) Whether it be a drama, action, or comedic play, a characters feelings are the real reason people go to see plays. The better an actor is the better the play becomes. In contrast, sometimes the actors dont stand up to the quality of the play and the actors make the play worse.
The Piano Lesson is a drama of great stature...
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