A new production of August Wilson’s autobiographical play “How I Learned What I Learned” opens in Coral Gables next week with the aim of immersing theatergoers in the lauded playwright’s formative years in Pittsburgh.
Originally performed by Wilson himself in 2003, the evocative one-man show chronicles the writer’s journey from life as a young Black poet in Pittsburgh’s Hill District into one of the most celebrated literary voices of the 20th century.
Conceived in 2003 with longtime dramaturg and Wilson collaborator Todd Kreidler, “How I Learned What I Learned” was Wilson’s penultimate play – an intimate memoir beloved by many Wilson fans and newcomers alike. Wilson died of liver cancer in 2005 at the age of 60.
(GableStage)
The GableStage production, which runs at the Biltmore Hotel Sept. 29 – Oct. 22, stars longtime South Florida actor Robert Strain. He snugly wraps the cloak of Wilson’s character around him as he shares powerful anecdotes and lessons learned by the writer, from his first encounters with love, music and transformative friendships to experiences with racism and violence that profoundly shaped him and his work.
The play is directed by Carey Brianna Hart, an accomplished Miami-born actor, director and playwright. Among her recent work, Hart directed the Main Street Players’ 2022 production of “Top Dog/Underdog,” M Ensemble’s 2022 “Blues for an Alabama Sky” and appeared earlier this year in “Last Summer at Bluefish Cove,” a Women of Wilton production in Wilton Manors.
Hart said the staging of “How I Learned What I Learned” brings to life the “crucible” in which Wilson the artist was formed, and has the power to inspire artistic pursuit.
(Magnus Stark)
“How I Learned What I Learned” sees longtime South Florida actor Robert Strain transform on stage into lauded American playwright August Wilson.
“Maybe somebody will be inspired to tap into that part of their imagination or creativity that they haven’t explored before,” she said. “There’s also the opportunity to learn a lesson through the lessons that August Wilson learned … how to be a kinder, more gentle, more respectful person as you move through life. That’s something that [he] learned repeatedly, how to have compassion for the individuals that he encountered, which is something that we could all use a little bit more of.”
Wilson’s plays made him a Broadway legend, but he was also an acclaimed poet and essayist who at the time of his death was one of only seven American dramatists to earn two Pulitzer Prizes.
(Pittsburgh Public Theater)
Actor Eugene Lee as playwright August Wilson in a 2015 Pittsburgh Public Theater production of “How I Learned What I Learned.”
Those outside the world of theater may know his work best from film adaptations of two of his plays: “Fences” – which won Viola Davis a 2017 best supporting actress Oscar, notched a best leading actor nomination for Denzel Washington and earned nominations for best picture as well as for best screenplay by Wilson – and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” which earned critical raves and a posthumous best actor Golden Globe for Chadwick Boseman in 2021.
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The production crew for “How I Learned What I Learned” is crafting 130 buildings and three bridges for a set designed by Frank Oliva.
Hart first encountered Wilson’s work as a 14-year-old ninth grader at the North Center for the Arts school, reading “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and connecting with its powerful themes.
“The racism that Ma Rainey experienced and that is chronicled in the play spoke to me because my mother was a civil rights activist,” said Hart, who graduated from New World School of the Arts in downtown Miami and the drama school at Chicago’s DePaul University. “She was jailed many times for her activities while she was a college student and then shortly thereafter before she calmed down a bit. But the story was a story I was familiar with and I was happy to see some of my history in play form.”
As a young drama student at DePaul, Hart saw her first Wilson plays before they made it to Broadway: “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Piano Lesson.” Both are part of a 10-part series of plays by Wilson known as the Century Cycle, which chronicles the Black American experience in the 20th century.
The GableStage staging of “How I Learned What I Learned” “shows the background and the landscape for where he came up with these characters … where these stories came from. They came from the streets. They came from the people he encountered in the Hill District,” said Hart, who is also creating the sound design for the production.
The staging places Wilson on the same Hill District streets that inspired his work, bringing to life the “crucible in which August Wilson has been fired up to create art,” Hart said. The play’s production crew is crafting 130 buildings and three bridges for a set designed by Frank Oliva, creating an elaborate scale model that grounds playgoers in Pittsburgh. As the story unfolds, the work of projection designer Joel Zishuk brings “visual metaphor to the spiritual act of artistic creation” in Wilson’s story, according to GableStage.
“We can see when he is fired up by his experiences and his ideas. The set will resonate. It will light up,” Hart said. “He’ll be triggered and you’ll see the triggering and the firing in the set. It’s really exciting.”
Strain, who wasn’t available for an interview according to GableStage, was last seen with the company for its 2012 production of Lynn Nottage’s “Ruined,” playing the character of Christian in a role that won him a coveted Carbonell Award for best supporting actor.
GableStage shared that Strain is a longtime faculty member at Florida Memorial University whose other credits include Lucius in “Tom Walker” at New Theatre, Kreon in “Antigone,” Kent in “King Lear” and Roosevelt in “Radio Golf,” the final installment in Wilson’s Century Cycle.
Tickets for “How I Learned What I Learned” are available at GableStage.org and range from $30-$65.