Playbill: This week Playbill catches up with Obie Award winner April Matthis, who is currently making her Broadway debut as Grace in the first Broadway revival of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson. Matthis joins an all-star cast that includes Samuel L. Jackson, Danielle Brooks, and John David Washington.
2 comments:
I admit that I'm not familiar with this particular play, but I'm excited that an August Wilson play is making its way back to Broadway and that it is being directed by a black woman. Those two things in themselves feel particularly poignant in this post-2020 landscape.
There were two things that stood out to me in this article: first, I'm very much in agreement that in order to truly commit to an anti-racist, equitable narrative, theatre needs to pay all of its artists what they're worth and it needs to make ticketing prices more affordable. By keeping artists on starvation wages and excluding those who are not privileged socioeconomically, theatre cannot move forward. As April Matthis says, diversity and inclusion is not just a box to check every season, but must be a true commitment towards change.
Second, I love the sentiment of digging deeper into female characters and other characters that only briefly exist in the script. When treated as plot points, these characters become one-dimensional and flat. They must be whole people and treated as such. It's one of the reason I usually don't like watching Shakespeare; when Ophelia is just treated as a plot point to further Hamlet's decent to his breaking point, then we can't care that she threw herself to her death. We must mourn for her as her own person in order to care about her beyond the male lead, and that comes from the care the director gives in holding the female characters in as high regard as the title character. But I also just think we should start doing plays that center around the female experience in the first place. Men have had enough of their time on stage.
I would love the chance to see this production. I can’t believe (or can I?) that this is the first August Wilson play on Broadway directed by a woman. I’m not too well-versed in The Piano Lesson specifically, but I have heard complaints that the female characters in Wilson’s plays are not always as fleshed out as the male ones. This is evident when the director pulls Matthis aside on the first day to ensure that her character will have the depth and complexity that she deserves. I appreciate this being a mission on shows. I’ve always been a fan of ensemble members developing backstories, or the team discussing what came before during tablework. We may feel in a rush to get to blocking and runs, but this work is extremely valuable to ensuring a well thought-out production. One other part of this article I enjoyed was when Matthis described her day before arriving to the theatre.
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