Wilson - Seven Guitars

Table of Contents

August Wilson is a remarkable American playwright. Seven Guitars is a formidably impressive tragi-comedy. This writing is as like and unlike Arthur Miller, as Duke Ellington is as like and unlike Igor Stravinsky.

Clive Barnes, New York Post

Full of quiet truth ... mesmerizing ... a major voice in our theater ... unusually powerful.

Howard Kissel, New York Daily News

A gritty, lyrical polyphony of voices that evokes the character and destiny of men and women who cant help singing the blues even when theyre just talking. Bristles with symbolism, with rituals of word and action that explode into anguished eloquence and finally into violence.

Jack Kroll, Newsweek

AUGUST WILSON, one of Americas leading playwrights, has won two Pulitzer Prizes, six New York Drama Critics Circle Best Play Awards, and a Tony Award. He is the author of Fences, The Piano Lesson, Ma Raineys Black Bottom, Two Trains Running, and Joe Turners Come and Gone, all of which are available in Plume editions.

Part bawdy comedy, part dark elegy, part mystery.... Although August Wilsons rich new play is addressing such big themes as identity and historical and spiritual truth, he never succumbs to polemicshis characters speak their individual voices.

William Tynan, Time

Fills the theater as if it were a grand opera ... lyrical passages, dazzling soliloquies, lots of dynamic action, and characters at once simple yet deeply affecting ... could become a classic of the American theater.

Joel Henning, Wall Street Journal

August Wilson has done it again! Hauntingly beautiful and abundantly funny, Seven Guitars is as tuneful and poetic as anything youll see on a Broadway stagemusicals included.

Roma Torre, NY-1 News

Brilliant blues ... a glorious achievement.... We would feel lucky in any season to see anything of such heart and soul as this unforgettable chronicle of a death foretold.

John Heilpern, New York Observer

Seven Guitars is possibly Wilsons most lyrical and exhilarating play, alternately bawdy and beautiful, anguished and angry, comic and romantic.

Albert Williams, Chicago Reader

Rich, vivid ... a lacework of hard-won wisdom, comical anecdotes and simple charm is spun to beguiling effect.

Damien Jacques, Milwaukee Journal

Rich with exceptionally vivid characters, eager to tell their stories and spin their tales.... Their voices and songs are the confident creations of a writer at the very top of his form.

Jeremy Gerard, Variety

For my wife
Constanza Romero
without whom my life would lack
the occasion of poetry
that her presence demands

Seven Guitars opened on January 21, 1995, at the Goodman Theater, Robert Falls, Artistic Director, Roche Schulfer, Executive Director, in Chicago, with the following cast:

Director: Walter Dallas
Set Design: Scott Bradley
Costume Design: Constanza Romero
Lighting Design: Christopher Akerlind
Musical Direction: Dwight Andrews
Sound Design: Tom Clark
Production Stage Manager: T. Paul Lynch
Stage Manager: Paula Neeley-Wipf
Casting: Meg Simon

Seven Guitars opened on September 15, 1995, at the Huntington Theatre Company, Peter Altman, Producing Director, Michael Masso, Managing Director, in Boston, Massachusetts, with the following cast:

Director: Lloyd Richards
Set Design: Scott Bradley
Costume Design: Constanza Romero
Lighting Design: Christopher Akerlind
Musical Direction: Dwight Andrews
Sound Design: Tom Clark
Production Stage Manager: Jane E. Neufeld
Stage Manager: Narda Alcorn
Casting: Meg Simon

Seven Guitars had its Broadway premiere at the Walter Kerr Theatre on March 28, 1996, with the following cast:

Director: Lloyd Richards
Set Design: Scott Bradley
Costume Design: Constanza Romero
Lighting Design: Christopher Akerlind
Musical Direction: Dwight Andrews
Sound Design: Tom Clark
Production Stage Manager: Jane E. Neufeld

Despite my interest in history, I have always been more concerned with culture, and while my plays have an overall historical feel, their settings are fictions, and they are peopled with invented characters whose personal histories fit within the historical context in which they live.

I have tried to extract some measure of truth from their lives as they struggle to remain whole in the face of so many things that threaten to pull them asunder. I am not a historian. I happen to think that the content of my mothers life her myths, her superstitions, her prayers, the contents of her pantry, the smell of her kitchen, the song that escaped from her sometimes parched lips, her thoughtful repose and pregnant laughterare all worthy of art.

Hence, Seven Guitars.

AUGUST WILSON, 1995

The action of the play takes place in the backyard of a house in Pittsburgh in 1948. It is a brick house with a single window fronting the yard. Access to the room is gained by stairs leading to a small porch on the side of the house. This is VERAS apartment. LOUISE and HEDLEY live on the second floor in separate quarters that are accessed by steps leading to a landing and a flight of stairs alongside the building. The stairs are wooden and are in need of repair. The yard is a dirt yard with a small garden area marked off by bricks. A cellar door leads into the basement where HEDLEY stores his gear. Off to the side and in the back of the yard is a contraption made of bricks, wood, and corrugated sheet metal, which is where HEDLEYkills his chickens and turkeys. Its a primitive mortician table of sorts. There is occasionally a card table set up in the yard with an eclectic mix of chairs. Several light bulbs, rigged by way of extension cords run from VERAs apartment, light the table so they can sit and play cards on the hot muggy summer nights of 1948.

The lights come up in the yard. CANEWELL, VERA, LOUISE, RED CARTER, and HEDLEYhave gathered in the yard. Dressed in their Sunday best, they have come from the cemetery where they have buried Floyd Barton. There is lingering evidence of food and drink. LOUISE, in a much-needed affirmation of life, is singing a bawdy song.

LOUISE (singing):

RED CARTER: Hey!