The Piano Lesson by August Wilson

The Pacific Coast Workshop for Young Artists
and the Four Worlds Theatre Research Group present:

THE PIANO LESSON
by August Wilson

Direction: Manuel Francisco Viveros
Adaptation: Everett Dixon, Manuel Viveros, Diego Burgos and the Pacific Coast Workshop for Young Artists

La Lección de Piano (de la selva) in the XII Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Bogotá














Marling Rentería and Jhonny Castillo as Berenice and Limón (Photo by Everett Dixon)



Brief History of the Workshop

The Pacific Coast Workshop for Young Artists is the result of an initiative of the Theatre Arts Department of the Cauca Valley University in Cali and the Arts Section of the Ministry of Culture, with the support of the University’s Pacific Coast Branch in Buenaventura.

As written in the original document when it was first presented: “This project seeks to promote arts and theatre training initiatives at an informal level in parts of the country that have been neglected in terms of artistic formation.” Its basic objective was to compensate for the lack of theatre instruction in certain parts of the country, and to strengthen the cultural identity of the Pacific Coast.

The Young Artists bring us the African Colombian identity, sharing onstage their experiences and beliefs, creating new audiences capable of criticizing the personal and social relations around them.

This project has not only met its expectations, but with time it has turned into a source of creation, investigation and knowledge in the theatre arts for the Buenaventura community.

Persevering in this process is all the more important because this group of young artists is an example of how dedication, effort and discipline can bring real betterment to the difficult social and security conditions in Buenaventura, and maintaining this kind of alternative is an example of spirit and bravery for the whole country.



THE PIANO LESSON – A FAMILY CONFLICT

The play is the story of a dispute between a brother and a sister over an old relic of the family inheritance: a legacy which represents their ancestors and connects them to their roots. Boy Willie arrives at Doaker’s house with the desire to transform the family history, and to do so, he must confront his sister Bernice, who will refuse to let go of the past.

The play talks of the moral and spiritual values of the African American culture, not just of the northern continent, but of the southern continent as well. In this way we must face the problems of adapting to western life, and the search for an identity that belongs to this continent and not to the exploitation of vestiges of an uprooted African heritage.

The piano becomes a metaphor for a poignant heritage which motivates and troubles all of the members of the family. The old relic is the only story left to them, the materialization of a painful past which still weighs down on them, a past which they don’t know what to do with anymore.
This is an adaptation of the original play, and of course our piano has its own characteristics. In our version, we have only changed names and places, but the original text is maintained almost entirely.

As far as we can tell, this is the premiere of this play in the Spanish-speaking world.

The Author

August Wilson (1945-2005) Radical and provocative playwright, born in 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, whose original name was Frederick August Kittel. His father was a German immigrant who worked as a baker and almost never appeared at home, which is why his African American mother, Daisy Wilson, divorced him. The playwright would later take on his mother’s name.

Awarded the Pulitzer Prize en 1987 and 1990 for his plays Fences and The Piano Lesson, Wilson dedicated himself to recovering the stories of rebellion, dignity and happiness of the black community in the United States during the XX century, in a collection of ten theatre plays, one for each decade, eight of which were premiered on Broadway. He told the story of the arrival of the African slaves to America, the experiences of the grandchildren and great grandchildren of those slaves, and the actual situation of the many middle-class families who would prefer to forget this painful past.

The Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, author of Angels in America, considers Wilson to be a “giant of the American theatre”. Kushner states that in the tradition begun by Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller, “he wrote dramas of social commitment, straightforward and realistic, y re-conquered for the theatre a territory which was considered lost.” However, the playwright’s conviction of the importance of connecting cultural creation with the social reality of a country also gained him enemies. There were some who called him a “separatist” who wanted to turn art into politics.


The Director

Manuel Francisco Viveros. African Colombian artist, graduate of the Theatre Arts Department of the Cauca Valle University, participant in more than five international festivals, Viveros is one of the most highly recognized African American actors of Colombia. He was a member of the former Corporación Teatro del Valle, with which he performed in various productions of the classical repertory, such as Condenado por Desconfiado by Tirso de Molina, Othello by William Shakespeare, and Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov. In 2004, he was named coordinator for the Pacific Coast Workshop for Young Artists, and has staged two productions, Beef, no Chicken by Derek Walcott (co-directed by Everett Dixon), and The Cretins by Roald Dahl. He is currently part of the directing team of the Fundación Teatro del Valle Independiente, of which he is also a founding member. In 2008, he premiered An Enemy of the People by Henirk Ibsen, which won a creation grant for the promotion of culture and tourism from the Cauca Valley Government in 2008. He also teaches theatre classes at the Pacific Coast Branch of Cauca Valley University.

CAST

Doaker Charles, retired, owner of the house - Ferley Salazar Balanta
Boy Willie, Doaker’s nephew - Luis Fernando Borja
Berniece, Boy Willie’s sister - Marling Rentería
Lymon, Boy Willie’s companion - Johnny Castillo
Marietta, Berniece’s daughter - Thalía Ivonne Meza
Harvey, preacher, suitor to Berniece - Oscar Javier Martínez
Wining Boy, Doaker’s brother - Juan Ricardo Buenaventura
Grace, an unknown woman - Jensy Renteria

Direction: Manuel Francisco Viveros
Production: Diego Fernando Burgos
Set Design: Angélica Lorena Hurtado
Costumes: Angélica Lorena Hurtado
Musical Arrangements: Mauricio Nieto Lugo
Project Director: Everett Dixon

CONTRIBUTORS: MINISTRY OF CULTURE/CAUCA VALLEY UNIVERSITY
Minister of Culture: Paula Marcela Moreno
President, Cauca Valley University: Iván Enrique Ramos
Vice-President, Research: Carolina Isaza de Lourido
Director, Four Words Theatre Research Group: Everett Dixon
Director, Cauca Valley University,Pacific Coast Branch: Jesús Glay Mejía
Theatre Arts Department Chairman: Gabriel Uribe


This is a co-production of the Four Worlds Research Group, funded by the Cauca Valley University Office for Investigation, and the Pacific Coast Workshop for Young Artists, funded by the Pacific Coast Branch of Cauca Valley University.

Buenaventura, 2009.

The Fugitives by Alejo Carpentier

Residency Prize, Ministry of Culture, 2008-09

Direction: Everett Dixon
Choreography: Yovanny Martinez Riaño
Assistant Choreographers/Interpretors: Jairo Lastre/Julian Garces
Lighting Design: Robinson Achinte
Musical Direction: Claudia Velez












Jairo Lastre (Cimarron) and Julian Garces (Dog) in the premiere of The Fugitives by Alejo Carpentier, February 19, 2009. University Hall, Javeriana University, Cali. (Photo: Claudia Vélez)


DANCE-THEATRE: PERFECTLY REDUNDANT

The essence of dance is movement. The essence of theatre is action.

True dance is not a question of perfection of form: the dancer's impulse is not just the serene internal movement of the martial arts master, but also the expression of an irrepressible human need - a shout made movement.

True theatre isn't just a question of form either: theatre action is a conflict manifest, an internal movement which expresses an irrepressible and tragic human need.

In this sense dance and theatre are the same art - both seek to express a conflict through concrete and directed movements - and there is something about the expression "dance-theatre" which is perfectly redundant.

However, there is no doubt that the traditions and conventions of these two sister arts are different, especially in its least successful incarnations. In dance, for example, when there is perfection of form, the interpretor can hide within, their spirit can go to sleep, and the audience, lulled by the beauty of movement, falls asleep in kind. Dance tends irresistibly to an empty "poetic" beauty, to elegant forms which don't really say anything.

The theatre, on the other hand, in its intent to express more "internal" conflicts, sometimes becomes very banal for its lack of expressive means, especially its physical expressivity.

This is why these two arts need each other constantly. Dancers teach actors to be physically present on stage, to express physically what their character wants, to attain a expressive conviction and forcefulness through physically dynamic actions. And actors teach dancers to be present in the "spirit", to participate spiritually in the actions they are carrying out, to react internally and to keep focussed on clear aims, to say something real, to want something real on stage, and to express this want in concrete but spiritual actions.

In a very specific sense, dance really reaches the audience when it has action and conflict - that is to say, when it has a theatrical essence. And theatre really reaches the audience when it has an urgency to its movements, when its has a dancistic essence. It's not a question of making away with the limits between the arts, but rather of recognizing that each art needs all of the others to get to its fullest expression.

This is what we have tried to achieve in this story about true freedom, this adaptation of the famous short story The Fugitives by Aleja Carpentier – five dancers, four actor, and a theatre director: to devise forms so theatrical and yet so anchored in movement that the audience ask at the exit: was it dance or was it theatre? We shall be happy if we have achieved it at least in some moments of the play.














Nattalia Izquierdo, Camilo Jaramillo and Lina Riascos as the Animal Chorus in The Fugitives by Alejo Carpentier. Javeriana University, February 19, 2009. (Photo: Claudia Vélez)


CAST

Cimarrón - Jairo Lastre
Dog- Julián Garcés
Grey Dog - Marcela Vanegas
Peacock - Nattalia Izquierdo
English Dog - Lina Riascos
Chorus - Actors: Camilo Jaramillo, Juan Pablo Astudillo, Lina Riascos, Nattalia Izquierdo
Dancers: Marcela Vanegas, Jhair Cambindo, Andrés Cardenas

Alejo Carpentier

Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier is considered, beside Mexican Juan Rulfo and Argentinian Luis Borges, to be one of the greatest writers of Latin America. Though none of the three ever won the Nobel Prize, it is generally held that they had deserved it much more than their outstanding, but lesser, followers, such as Gabriel García Marquez and Miguel Angel Asturias. Carpentier, with his novel Kingdom of this World, is credited with having invented the style of magic realism, and his stories, like this one about an escaped slave (or Cimarron) who develops a friendship with an escaped slave-hunting dog, are unsentimental looks at how cruelty and violence are at the centre of our most fundamental need for freedom and happiness.