The Piano Lesson
August Wilson (1987)
“A piano carved with the faces of slaves sits in a Pittsburgh living room — and whether to sell it or keep it may be the most important argument two siblings ever have.”
Why This Book Matters
The Piano Lesson won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Wilson's second Pulitzer after Fences. It is part of the Pittsburgh Cycle — ten plays covering each decade of Black American life in the twentieth century, one of the most ambitious theatrical projects in American history. The play is singular in American drama for making an inanimate object the literal repository of ancestral souls — the piano is not a metaphor for family legacy, it IS the family's archive, and the debate over what to do with it is the play's entire dramatic engine.
Firsts & Innovations
First major American play to dramatize the question of ancestral archives — what happens to the physical record of enslaved people's lives
Part of the first sustained dramatic cycle to document the full sweep of Black American experience decade by decade
One of the first major plays to stage the supernatural not as theatrical device but as historical weight — Sutter's ghost is an unresolved property claim as much as a spirit
Cultural Impact
Established Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle as the definitive theatrical documentation of twentieth-century Black American life
The piano-as-archive concept influenced subsequent discussions of cultural memory, reparations, and historical documentation in Black studies
Regularly produced at regional theaters and universities — the debate structure makes it ideal for classroom discussion
The 2021 Netflix film adaptation directed by Malcolm Lee and starring John David Washington and Danielle Deadwyler introduced the play to new audiences
Wilson's dialogue style — blues-inflected, oral, rhythmic — influenced a generation of Black playwrights and screenwriters
Banned & Challenged
Not frequently challenged, but the play has been criticized in some school contexts for language, depictions of violence, and supernatural content. More significantly, some productions have struggled with Wilson's strong preference that his work be directed by Black directors — he famously sparred with director Robert Brustein over this principle in 1996.