BETHESDA, Md. — The late August Wilson is known for his “Pittsburgh Cycle” of 10 plays, each exploring a different decade of the African-American experience.
But did you know that after this iconic series, he devised a one-man play about his own personal life?
The autobiographical “How I Learned What I Learned” hits Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Maryland, now through July 2, following Wilson’s life as a struggling young writer in the Hill District of Pittsburgh.
“I co-conceived this with him in his basement,” director Todd Kreidler told WTOP. “This was actually a piece that August originally performed himself and was meant to be the first thing after the cycle. We planned that after ‘Radio Golf’ was set up regionally … we would begin to take offers to do this show.”
Kreidler is as close to an August Wilson aficionado as you’ll find. Not only has he directed several of the Pittsburgh Cycle plays — namely “King Hedley II” with Viola Davis, who just won an Oscar for the film “Fences” — he also formed a tight bond with Wilson in the last several years before his death in 2005.
“I never claim to be an August Wilson expert, but I’m an expert at hanging out with him the last six years of his life,” Kreidler said. “I started as his assistant in Pittsburgh and we would hang outside the theater, so I stepped into this unlikely relationship at the age of 25. He’s smoking cigarettes and we’re falling into a slipstream of conversation. We’re late for rehearsal and people are coming out to bring us in because we thought we were outside for five minutes and we were outside for three hours.”
It was during these casual, street-corner conversations that he first heard about this one-man show.
“He was telling me at the time, ‘Todd, man, I’m working on this show called ‘I’m Not Spalding Gray,’ which was his one-man show,” Kreidler said. “Then, seven [or] eight months later, we were studying comedy routines on a ‘Kings of Comedy’ DVD and he said, ‘Man, we’re going to call it, ‘Move Over Chris Rock’ and I’m going to do my own brand of stand-up comedy.’ Then, another six months he said, ‘Nah, it’s going to be ‘Sambo Takes Over the World’ and I’m going to take on all these stereotypes.”
Eventually, as often happens in life, this carefree brainstorming phase was thrust into pressing reality.
“One night, he called me in a panic,” Kreidler said. “He said, ‘Todd, man, I’m in trouble. … I was at this fundraiser at Seattle Rep and I told him about our one-man show and they offered us a slot! So I really gotta do this, man! Do you want to direct?’ I grew 6 feet tall. … When he became ill, he wanted me to go on and do it with an actor, but it took me another decade until I would finally climb that mountain.”
Enter actor Eugene Lee, who got his start acting with the Ebony Players at Texas State University, where he performed “A Raisin in the Sun” for Lyndon B. Johnson in the last play that he ever saw.
“The very first autograph I ever gave was to Lady Bird Johnson,” Lee said. “I played the role of the African, Asagai. They all came up afterward and she said, ‘What country in Africa are you from?’ I said, ‘No, ma’am. I’m from Fort Worth.’ She said, ‘You were wonderful! I must have your autograph!'”
Since then, Lee has enjoyed a prolific career, including performing eight of the 10 “Pittsburgh Cycle” plays. After years of playing Wilson’s fictional characters, what is it like playing the man himself?
“Once you get past the honor, it’s really nice to sink your teeth into his language and sink your teeth into the inspiration for the characters that I played in some of those other stories that I’ve come to know and enjoy,” Lee said. “That’s what a lot of those stories are: the inspiration for a 20-year-old poet that eventually became the characters in these Pulitzer Prize-winning and compelling plays.”
In rehearsing the performance, Lee consciously chose an interpretation rather than an imitation.
“This is not the Daniel Day-Lewis version,” Lee joked. “I’m not trying to be him, sound like him, look like him. The effort is to try to conjure his spirit through his storytelling. … That’s the August a lot of people recognize. They recognize him through his work and his language. … You don’t act his plays, you sing them. The language is an elevated form of ‘The Language of My Mother.’ It’s very poetic.”
It was indeed a turning point for Wilson when he realized his everyday language was his vehicle.
“It’s that 20-year-old poet who was listening to all of those Dylan Thomas recordings, poetry and voices of elevated European language, then making the connection later in life that the language he heard growing up had the same value,” Kreidler said. “He didn’t need to reach outside of his culture to bring it to life; it could all happen from within. That was the epiphany … and then he let them sing.”
As a result, “How I Learned What I Learned” expresses Wilson’s language visually in the set design.
“There’s a great photograph of August caught behind pages of his writing,” Kreidler said. “Initially, we had this idea of a wall of written pages, but then we were like, ‘Wait a minute, these are 20-year-old poet stories that prefigure the cycle, so they’re not written yet!’ So, there’s now this constellation of white pages, this beautiful sculpture, then there’s a platform that evokes a boxing ring or an auction block, buried right into the dirt in the hill, so you feel like you’re in the Hill District of Pittsburgh.”
As Lee first takes this stage in his best Wilson portrayal, audiences no doubt expect a certain social commentary for which Wilson has become famous. But Kreider and company have several surprises.
“One of our principles when we were in the basement, we hung up [a sign] on the wall [that said], ‘Subvert Expectations,'” Kreidler said. “So the show begins in a way that you would expect to meet August Wilson; it’s very formal, the subject he talks about [is serious] … then we yank the rug out.”
In other words, the play becomes wildly funny, which was the man that Kreider knew in person.
“People are surprised how funny the show is,” Kreidler said. “I find that stunning, because I think the [cycle] plays are extraordinarily [funny]. They’re character-driven humor. … We would spend these epic, 16-hour days together and I would lie in bed at night and my chest would hurt from laughing all day, because we would laugh and laugh. He was very funny, and I feel like this show brings that.”
One example of this particular humor goes as such in this joke: “My ancestors have been in America since the early 17th century. And for the first 244 years, we never had a problem finding a job.”
Of course, embedded within the humor is the biting satire that defines Wilson’s work. You can see this in the full title for the play, which rivals even “Dr. Strangelove” for its length: “How I Learned What I Learned: And How What I Learned Has Led Me to the Places That I Wanted to Go That I Have Sometimes Gone Unwillingly; It Is the Crucible in Which Many a Work of Art Has Been Fired.”
“I’ve come to look at this piece as how I learned what *I* learned,” Kreidler said. “I remember my bad reviews, but [one] review [said], ‘He may be our next August Wilson.’ … You can imagine at 19 years old to even dream that I’d ever meet the man. … My three primary relationships are my mother, my grandfather and August Wilson. Both personally and my career, my soul has been marked by that.”
Click here for more information. Listen to the full chat with Eugene Lee and Todd Kreidler below:
