A few generations ago, the Charles family was enslaved and owned by a family called Sutter. Berniece’s brother, Boy Willie, arrives with his friend Lymon from Mississippi, the family’s home state before the Great Migration. The titular piano is the centerpiece of the parlor in the Pittsburgh home shared by Doaker Charles, his niece Berniece, and Berniece’s pre-teen daughter Maretha. The Piano Lesson, set in 1936, is chronologically the fourth book in Wilson’s Century Cycle, also known as the Pittsburgh Cycle-a series of 10 plays, each taking place in a different decade of the 20th century and depicting the experiences of Black Americans living in Wilson’s own childhood stomping grounds, the Hill District of Pittsburgh (except for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which takes place in Chicago). In 1995, the play was adapted into an award-winning television movie. It also won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, marking Wilson’s second Pulitzer after winning his first for Fences in 1987. Epatha Merkerson ( Berniece), and Jackson in his Broadway debut as Dutton’s understudy it earned five Tony nominations, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play, and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Best Play award. The play opened on Broadway in 1990 with Charles S. August Wilson’s play The Piano Lesson premiered in 1987 at Yale Repertory Theatre starring a young, unknown Samuel L.
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