Gale - A Study Guide for August Wilsons Ma Raineys Black Bottom

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ISBN 0-7876-5253-9
ISSN 1094-9232

Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

August Wilson

1984

August Wilsons Ma Raineys Black Bottom, his first play in a ten-play cycle, each chronicling a decade in the African-American experience, was first performed at the Yale Repertory Theater in 1984, though Wilson began writing the play in 1976, after listening to the blues for more than a decade. Set in a Chicago recording studio in 1927, the two-act drama tells the story of a recording session with blues legend Ma Rainey, her band members, and the white producer and agent who made themselves wealthy through Raineys recordings. The play explores race relations between blacks and whites in 1920s America and the African-American search for identity. The title comes from the song of the same name, which is at the heart of a major conflict in the play. Of particular note is Wilsons character, Levee, who literally embodies the aspirations and disappointments of black males during this era and, arguably, today. Wilson pits Levee against Rainey, the band members, and the whites, examining various stripes of inter- and intra-racial conflict.

Partly inspired by the plays of Amiri Baraka, who warned black writers to keep their characters faithful to the black experience, Wilson finished the first version of the play in 1981 and had it accepted by the Eugene ONeill Theater Centers National Playwrights Conference in the summer of 1982. In 1985, the play opened on Broadway at the Cort Theater, and it subsequently captured a slew of awards including the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best American play. Ma Raineys Black Bottom is considered Wilsons first major play and helped to cement his reputation as an important American playwright.

Born in 1945 to a white father, Frederick August Kittle, and a black mother, Daisy Wilson, August Wilson grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A voracious reader who credits his mother for his love of language, Wilson dropped out of school in the ninth grade, educating himself at libraries. In 1962, Wilson enlisted in the U.S. Army but was discharged a year later. In 1965, he decided to become a writer, buying his first typewriter for twenty dollars. In 1968, he helped to found Pittsburghs Black Horizons on the Hill Theater, with the goal of politicizing the community. Wilson was heavily involved with the Civil Rights movement during this time and described himself as a Black Nationalist. After he moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1978, Wilsons career began to gather steam. Following the oft-given advice to write what you know, Wilson created characters that spoke like people he knew in black neighborhoods of Pittsburgh.

In 1980, the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis accepted his play, Jitney, a drama set in a Pittsburgh taxi station, and in 1982 the prestigious Eugene ONeill Center accepted Ma Raineys Black Bottom. The success of this play helped catapult Wilson into the national limelight. Ma Raineys Black Bottom received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best play and an Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award nomination from the League of New York Theatres and Producers. Wilsons next effort, Fences, was even more successful, garnering an Outstanding Play Award from the American Theatre Critics, a Drama Desk Outstanding New Play Award, a New York Drama Critics Circle Best Play Award, a Pulitzer Prize for drama, a Tony Award for best play, and a Best Broadway play award from the Outer Critics Circle. The latest installment in Wilsons ambitious plan to write a ten-play cycleeach dealing with a decade in Black American historyis King Hedley II, which opened in 2001 on Broadway. Set during 1985 in Pittsburghs Hill District, King Hedley II explores the relationship between an ex-convict struggling to understand his life and the impoverished community in which he lives. Wilson continues to write and to speak out, from his home in Seattle, Washington, for the creation of and the funding for black theaters.

Ma Raineys Black Bottom opens in a Chicago recording studio in early March 1927. Rainey has taken a break from touring to record some songs for Sturdyvants studio. As the lights come up, Sturdyvant is warning Irvin that he will not put up with any of Ma Raineys shenanigans. Sturdyvant characterizes Rainey as a prima donna, someone who expects the world to do her bidding. Irvins assurances that Rainey will show up on time do not sound convincing, however, and the more Sturdyvant warns Irvin that he wont put up with Raineys attitude, the more prepared the audience becomes for an inevitable conflict when she does appear.

Cutler and the band appear shortly, and Levee shows up carrying his new shoes, which he paid for in part with money he won from Cutler the night before playing craps, a dice game. Levees new Florsheim shoes represent a shift in musical taste from blues to jazz and swing, a change that Sturdyvant wants to exploit, at least initially, when he tells Irvin to have the band record Levees version of Ma Raineys Black Bottom.