Seven Guitars by August Wilson. New York. 1996. Dutton. 0525941967. 109 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - ‘The seven guItars of the title are the seven characters whose straightforward story lines Wilson turns into beautiful, complex music - a funky, walling, irresistible Chicago blues.' - John Lahe, The New Yorker. In tne spring of 1948, in the still-cool evenings of Pittsburgh's Hill district, familiar sounds fill the air. A rooster crows. Screen doors slam. There's the laughter of friends gathered for a backyard card game rising just above the wail of a mother who has lost her son. And there's the sound of the blues, played and sung by young men and women with little more than a guitar in their hands and a dream in their hearts. August Wilson's SEVEN GUITARS is the sixth chapter in the continuing theatrical saga that explores the hope, heartbreak, and heritage of the African-American experience in the twentieth century. The story follows a small group of friends who gather following the untimely death of Floyd ‘Schoolboy' Barton, a local blues guitarist on the edge of stardom. Together, they revisit his short life, reminisce about the good times they shared, and discover the unspoken passions and undying spirit that ire within each of them. ‘A play whose epic proportions and abundant spirit remind us of what the American theater once was. . . . Not since Mr. Wilson's own TWO TRAINS RUNNING and Tony Kushner's ANGELS IN AMERICA has Broadway seemed quite so alive. . . . As funny as it is moving and lyrical. It's the highlight of what now seems to be a brand-new theater season.' - Vincent Canby, New York Times. ‘Full of quiet truth . . . mesmerizing . . . a major voice in our theater . . . unusually powerful.' - Howard Kissel, New York Daily News.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - August Wilson (Frederick August Kittel Jr.; April 27, 1945 – October 2, 2005) was an American playwright. He has been referred to as the "theater's poet of Black America". He is best known for a series of 10 plays, collectively called The Pittsburgh Cycle (or The Century Cycle), which chronicle the experiences and heritage of the African-American community in the 20th century. Plays in the series include Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990), each of which won Wilson the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) and Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988). In 2006, Wilson was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. August Wilson was born in 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up in a two-room apartment behind a grocery store on Bedford Avenue in the city's Hill district. He learned to read at age four. At fifteen he quit high school and began his self-education at the Carnegie Library. At twenty he dedicated himself to writing poetry and supported himself with a series of jobs: dishwasher, short-order cook, porter, toy store stock boy, gardener, and mailroom clerk. At thirty-three he left Pittsburgh for St. Paul, Minnesota, where he turned to play writing. In addition to MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM, FENCES, and JOE TURNER'S COME AND GONE, August Wilson is the author of THE PIANO LESSON, which won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for drama, and TWO TRAINS RUNNING.
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