1、Piano lesson,August Wilson 奧古斯特威爾遜,August Wilson is the most influential and successful African American playwright writing today. He is the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences, The Piano Lesson, King Hedley II, Ma Rainys Black Bottom, Joe Turners Come and Gone, Seven Guitars, Two Train

2、s Running, Jitney and Radio Golf. His plays have been produced all over the world.,威爾遜用了二十余年的時(shí)間創(chuàng)作了十部戲劇，每部劇均以上一世紀(jì)中的一個(gè)十年為背景，反映那個(gè)十年中美國(guó)黑人最普遍的問(wèn)題，堪稱(chēng)美國(guó)黑人的世紀(jì)史詩(shī)。這十部劇依次為（按照劇中所描述的時(shí)間排序）：海洋之珍（2003）、喬特納來(lái)了又走了（1986）、萊妮大媽的黑臀舞（1984）、鋼琴課（1987）、七把吉他（1995）、籬笆（1985）、兩列火車(chē)跑（1990）、吉特尼（1982）、赫德列王二世（1999）、無(wú)線電高爾夫（2005）。威爾遜的十部劇

3、中已有八部在百老匯上演 ，且1988年他有兩部劇籬笆和喬特納來(lái)了又走了在百老匯同時(shí)演出，頗為轟動(dòng)。,August Wilson is believed to be the fourth greatest playwright after Eugene ONeil, Tennessee,Williams and Arthur Miller（尤金奧尼爾、田納西威廉斯和阿瑟米勒）. He learned by himself all the way from a dropout to the most successful African-American playwright. Wilson cl

4、aimed himself to be a cultural nationalist（文化民族主義）. His epic 10-play cycle, rooted in black culture, ennobles the black experience and affirms the long neglected value in the American blacks.,The Piano Lesson,Drama in two acts by August Wilson, produced in 1987 and published in 1990. The play, which

5、 was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1990, is part of Wilsons cycle about African-American life in the 20th century.,Set in 1936 Pittsburgh during the aftermath of the Great Depression, The Piano Lesson follows the lives of the Charles family in the Doaker Charles household and an heirloom, the infamous

6、 piano. The play focuses on the arguments between a brother and a sister who have different ideas on what to do with the piano they own. The brother, Boy Willie, is a sharecropper who wants to sell the piano to buy the land (Sutters land) that his ancestors had toiled on as slaves while the sister,

7、Berniece, remains emphatic about keeping it. The piano shows the carved faces of their great-grandfathers wife and son during the days of their enslavement.,In his second Pulitzer Prize-winner, The Piano Lesson , Wilson has fashioned his most haunting and dramatic work yet. At the heart of the play

8、stands the ornately carved upright piano which, as the Charles familys prized, hard-won possession, has been gathering dust in the parlor of Berniece Charless Pittsburgh home. When Boy Willie, Bernieces exuberant brother, bursts into her life with his dream of buying the same Mississippi land that h

9、is family had worked as slaves, he plans to sell their antique piano for the hard cash he needs to stake his future. But Berniece refuses to sell, clinging to the piano as a reminder of the history that is their family legacy. This dilemma is the real piano lesson, reminding us that blacks are often

10、 deprived both of the symbols of their past and of opportunity in the present.,my comment,I believe that the key question in the drama is about self-worth. What The Piano Lesson finally seems to ask is: What do you do with your legacy, and how do you best put it to use?,威爾遜稱(chēng)自己是文化民族主義者，認(rèn)為種族是個(gè)人身份和個(gè)性最重要的組成部分，它最直接影響著你對(duì)你自己的看法以及別人對(duì)你的反應(yīng)。他曾多次強(qiáng)調(diào)黑人自踏上美洲大陸以來(lái)，一直進(jìn)行的斗爭(zhēng)就是爭(zhēng)取對(duì)黑人自身價(jià)值