Danielle Deadwyler, left, and Ray Fisher in a scene from The Piano Lesson.David Lee/The Associated Press
With stories spanning the 1900s to the 1990s, legendary Black American playwright August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle remains an incendiary series of works. With each of Wilson’s 10 instalments set in a different decade of the 20th century (and counting the Pulitzer Prize-winning plays Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990) amongst its rich offerings) the Pittsburgh Cycle is a monumental act of witnessing the intricacies and spirit of Black American life.
For first-time filmmaker and screenwriter Malcolm Washington, son of film and stage legends Denzel and Pauletta Washington, adapting The Piano Lesson is a continuation of his family’s commitment to bringing Wilson’s work to the screen. Since the playwright’s passing in 2005, the Washington family has been central in the production of the film adaptations (or re-adaptations) Fences (2016), Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020) and, now, The Piano Lesson, and has publicly committed to bringing even more of the playwright’s work to the screen.
Set in 1936 Pittsburgh in the wake of the Great Depression, The Piano Lesson follows the lives of the Charles family and, crucially, centres one of Wilson’s best-written female characters in the form of Berniece Charles, played by actor Danielle Deadwyler.
Strong-willed and level-headed, widowed Berniece opposes brother Boy Willie’s desires to buy back the Southern land that their family has been sharecroppers on for generations through the selling of a hard-won and precious family heirloom – a piano adorned with intricate portraits of previous generations of the Charles family, each carved by hand into the piano’s wooden form by an enslaved ancestor.
A graduate of the American Film Institute’s storied directing program, Malcolm’s skillful work on his debut feature (co-adapted by Mudbound (2017) co-writer Virgil Williams) underscores the collective knowledge and history of its team of creators. Tenet (2020) actor John David Washington co-stars as Boy Willie alongside industry titan Samuel L. Jackson as Doaker and actors Ray Fisher and Michael Potts – all of whom reprise their roles from the 2022 Broadway revival of the play directed by LaTanya Richardson Jackson, who is also the wife of actor Jackson (the latter of whom understudied the role of Boy Willie in the play’s first staging at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1987).
“I was so blessed to grow up admiring communities of actors and creatives,” Malcolm shared during an interview ahead of the film’s international premiere at the Toronto International Film festival earlier this fall. Joined by the film’s leads, Danielle Deadwyler and sibling John David, Malcolm continues, offering, “I’m a big Spike Lee fan and I loved the way he moved through the 1990s with these collections of people. With Wilson’s work, you know that you are part of a larger lineage, so to have representatives of the older guard give us their blessing and confidence was really beautiful. We wanted to carry on that legacy and also build our own community and family with new players.”
Speaking on the orbit of past Wilson collaborators and celebrators who have supported and shaped the making of the film, Deadwyler says, “It’s such an offering of confidence. There is a real mutual respect in that everyone we learned from was confident and proud of us and know that we are all walking with reverence for August’s work, for Black culture and Black history. Plus,” she adds, chuckling, “Sam knows everybody’s lines.” Malcolm playfully interjects as the trio erupts into spirited laughter, “Yes, he did half of them himself!”
“I was really and truly blessed to have such a great community of collaborators who held me up and believed in what I was trying to do,” the director continues, slyly pointing to Deadwyler and elder brother John David as he shares, “These two were chief among them. Every step of the way they kept pushing me to be bold and to use my voice because, ultimately, what we were trying to do is create a piece of work that would touch somebody that maybe didn’t feel like they had access to work like Wilson’s, especially for young people and young Black people in particular.”
“Malcolm also afforded us the freedom to try, to fail, to fall, to find,” John David adds, “We had complete autonomy. The way he operates – it felt like a real collaboration. We were able to discover the words in a different way. It was really liberating.”
Inspired by the life and work of American writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, Malcolm and Danielle worked collaboratively to shape Berniece as a character. “West African spirituality really pushed my understanding of her character,” Deadwyler shares, continuing, “The non-linearity of her is a major element of her character. It was a matter of working through desire and grief in the space-continuum that she’s living within.”
“It’s funny you use the word ‘desire’,” John David adds, “I love how Wilson writes for characters. There’s a clear understanding about what they want and what drives them but, at the same time, there are so many other ways to interpret what else is going on. As an actor, that’s the kind of thing that will get you to a performance that you didn’t know you could get to, and for me, that’s cathartic. That anticipation of finding out what could happen within a role – knowing I’m going to be a different person afterwards – is healing in a lot of ways.
“At the same time,” the actor continues, sharing a hearty laugh with both his younger brother and co-star Deadwyler as he says, “Black folks, we’re funny – especially when we’re talking about what pains us, what irritates us, what’s getting on our daggone nerves. And all those kinds of opportunities to express the African-American experience in Wilson’s work is such full and fertile ground to plant on. To me, those moments like this, words like that and with actors like this is how you grow.”
Speaking to the genesis of her character, Deadwyler offers, “I always try to get to an ecstatic feeling. I think about death being a kind of ecstasy ...” and is interrupted by an enthusiastic “Damn!” from John David.
“I’ve been talking about the erotic as a vital life force that’s moving through a lot of us,” Deadwyler continues, “Speaking from Berniece’s experience, it’s something that hasn’t yet been actualized for her. Black folks in many families often don’t talk about the lore and myths of their families, but the language of the body does. There’s a different kind of ecstasy that comes out of the body and its expression and that’s the catharsis for me. That’s what I lean into; for me, that’s an erotic experience: to go where you have not gone as an actor as well as a person navigating through your own personal or family histories.”
Of all of Wilson’s Pittsburgh plays, The Piano Lesson covers the greatest amount of time, and the task of conveying the specificities and spectres of several generations is no easy one, with the weight of holding past, present and future – as well as the intergenerational joys and discords within that – forming the backbone of both the play as well as the visual and narrative poetics of Washington’s screen adaptation.
“That’s something I’ve been wrestling with in my own life for awhile,” Malcolm shares. “Not knowing that I needed to heal from decisions that I didn’t necessarily make, but that nevertheless live inside of me and that I hold and feel responsible for now. In making this movie, I had to engage deeply with those ideas and look to the people that made my life possible. It was an act of holding their legacy up, forgiving them, forgiving myself and loving all of us together.”