The College of William and Mary
Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall Mainstage
Audience Guide
Prepared by Joel White
A NOTE ABOUT THIS GUIDE…
Thank you for visiting our website and for reviewing this audience guide. We are happy
to learn that you seek to be an informed audience member and an intellectually active
participant in this communal event. This guide, coupled with the lobby display and preshow discussion with Dr. Karen Turner Ward, Dr. Robin Boisseau, and KB Saine,
seeks to enhance your understanding of the play and the director’s approach to the
production.
In this guide you will find:
 Information about the playwright
 An overview of African American history from 1865-1911
 An historical “snapshot” of Pittsburgh in 1911
 A conversation between the director and dramaturge
 Information on stylistic references that shaped the director’s approach to “Joe
Turner’s Come and Gone”
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
August Wilson was born as Frederick August
Kittel in Pittsburgh in 1945. He grew up in the Hill
district of that city, a predominantly African American
area in which most of his plays are set. His father,
Frederick Kittel, Sr., was a German immigrant. His
mother, Daisy Wilson Kittel, was an African
American native of North Carolina who walked to
Pittsburgh in search of a better life. His parents
divorced when he was young and his father
completely disappeared from his life thereafter.
Wilson taught himself to read by age 4 and by age 12
he had already begun reading such acclaimed African American writers as Ralph Ellison and Langston
Hughes.
His mother remarried when he was a teenager and his family relocated to a predominantly white
neighborhood. There, Wilson discovered the severity of racism in America as his family was met with
open hostility. His academic career ended at age 15 when a teacher falsely accused him of plagiarism,
alleging that an African American student couldn’t possibly write as well as he did.
Throughout the ensuing years, as he supported himself with various odd jobs and even a brief stint in the
US Army, Wilson honed his writing skills and aggressively sought to educate himself. He became
involved with the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s, publishing poetry in popular journals such as
Black World. He moved to St. Paul in 1978 and moved toward writing plays. After initially struggling to
get his plays published, Wilson found success in 1984 when Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom was accepted by
the Eugene O’Neill Theatre workshop. It went on to enjoy a successful Broadway run, where it earned a
New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for best new play.
Ma Rainey was the first in a cycle of ten plays that provide a chronology of the experience of blacks in
America, each one representing a different decade in African American history. Wilson draws heavily on
his own experiences in the Hill and beyond in these plays. In particular, his plays focus on the African
American quest for identity and the disadvantageous position blacks must cope with in a white man’s
world. Written over the course of 20 years, these plays are united by their common themes and even a
few shared characters. These include Jitney, Fences, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson,
Two Trains Running, Seven Guitars, King Hedley II, Gem of the Ocean, and Radio Golf. Wilson also
wrote and starred in an autobiographical one-man show called How I Learned What I Learned.
All together, these plays earned Wilson two Pulitzer Prizes, seven New York Drama Critics’ Circle
Awards, two Drama Desk awards, three American Theatre Critics’ Association Awards, and a Tony
award (for Fences) among many other accolades. President Clinton awarded Wilson with a National
Humanities Medal in 1999.
Sources (via Credo Reference):
Encyclopedia of African-American Writing
The Columbia Encyclopedia
How did we get here?
An Overview of African American History 1965-1911
Reconstruction (1865-1877)
This brief but notable period in American history marks the greatest extent to which African Americans
were involved in governance. In the wake of the Civil War, the Republican Party, which dominated the
victorious North, had the obvious upper hand in determining the fate of the Democratic-controlled
South. The Republican-controlled Congress quickly passed the Thirteenth Amendment after the
conclusion of the war, which resulted in the abolition of slavery.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, President Lincoln and Congress battled over how to deal with
the readmission of Southern States. This rift only worsened after Lincoln’s assassination, as President
Andrew Johnson was considerably more sympathetic to the South’s interests. Under Johnson’s watch,
which historians refer to as Presidential Reconstruction, the newly readmitted Southern states created
new constitutions and passed laws known as the Black Codes. These laws denied many rights to
African Americans and forced them into very disadvantageous positions in matters of commerce.
Congress, increasingly frustrated with Johnson’s leadership, passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866
over his veto in order to provide protection against the Black Codes. This granted significant authority
to the Freedman’s Bureau to look out for the interests of freed blacks. Congress then passed the
Reconstruction Act of 1867, which divided each Southern state into military districts under martial law.
Each state also had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment in order to be readmitted. This
amendment had much the same effect as the Civil Rights Act.
Under Congressional supervision, Radical Reconstruction led to the drafting of very progressive
state constitutions in the South. The Fifteenth Amendment gave black men the right to vote.
During this period, two black men were appointed to the United States Senate.
Economic conditions were still far from equitable for blacks. Many of them, in search of land to buy,
were forced into sharecropping. In this imperfect system, blacks signed contracts that gave them the
responsibility to plant crops on a particular plot of land and give a share of the harvest to the plantation
owner.
Reconstruction came to an end as ex-Confederate officials regained enfranchisement through amnesty
and the repeal of the “ironclad oath” requirement. The ten years after 1867 saw Southern whites employ
legal and illegal means to disenfranchise blacks and keep them out of elective office. The so-called “Reign
of Terror” culminated in the Election of 1876, which was essentially a tie. When Republican
candidate Rutherford B. Hayes promised to remove Union troops from the South and end
Reconstructed if elected, Congress obliged. And so Reconstruction came to an end.
The Struggle to Find Their Song (1880-1916)
Passage in From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans: “In these years of segregation
and disenfranchisement, of lynching and race riots, self-help developed as a practical philosophy born of
despair from rights gained and lost after slavery’s end and the painful realization that a certain amount of
accommodation to the status quo would be necessary for survival.”
The above quote goes a long way toward explaining the situation that many blacks like Harold Loomis
found themselves in as America moved toward the 20th Century. During this time, black leaders sought
to pave the way toward equal social footing through education. Scholars such as W.E.B. Du Bois and
Booker T. Washington advocated this strategy in numerous publications. Key to this goal was the
doctrine of black self-determination; meaning blacks should control their own institutions and
speak for themselves. Ironically, this led to blacks in positions of authority in schools and churches more
in the South than in the North.
Blacks seeking education received very little help from state governments in the South, however.
Virtually all money funneled toward public education benefitted white schools. Virtually nothing was
done to combat this, and many states passed laws requiring schools to be segregated. In the realm of
higher education, schools like Hampton Institute emphasized vocational training for blacks to help them
acquire land and homes, while other schools such as Howard and Fisk focused on a more liberal arts
approach. These two schools of thought paved the way for the noted debates between Booker T.
Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois.
Outside of academia, however, most African Americans were struggling with the challenge of living in a
segregated society. After all, by 1880, three-quarters of African Americans were still living in the Jim
Crow South. Most of them worked as poorly-paid farm workers who were struggling to adjust to the
South’s new, more modern economy. Thus, beginning as early as 1879, thousands of black farm workers
left Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia to head into the cities to the North and West.
Those urban blacks who were unable to find industrial work opted for an entrepreneurial approach in
order to provide services that would otherwise be unavailable in a segregated market. This also carried
the additional benefit of allowing African Americans to employ each other. This is very similar to Seth’s
strategy of providing lodging to other African Americans.
Churches also played a pivotal role in helping right social wrongs, as the Social Gospel of the
Progressive movement in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries influenced black Baptist ministers in the
South. Many congregations worked to find salvation at the social level by combating poverty, racism,
immigration, and poor urban conditions. African Americans were also involved in the women’s
movement at this same time. The National Association of Colored Women worked through its
many state and local branches to advance the cause of black women and children, often by founding
settlement houses.
By 1911, when our play takes place, African Americans were still struggling to deal with economic and
social inequalities in both the North and South. Agricultural and industrial jobs were hard to come by,
wages were low, schools were segregated, and most blacks were still effectively barred from voting. They
were still in search of their song.
Sources
Franklin, John Hope, and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of
African Americans. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. Print.
Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African American History: From 1492 to the Present. Detroit: Gale
Research, 1997. Print.
THE WORLD IN 1911
Awakening the Sleeping Giant
In the wake of Reconstruction, the United States entered the 20th Century as a rapidly growing nation.
The industrialization of the South and various advances in technology rapidly expanded the size and
scope of America’s economy. New railroads swelled the populations of the American Midwest.
Ranchers and homesteaders moved west in droves, setting the stage for the New Mexico Territory to
become a state in 1912. America’s influence abroad grew as well: after the conclusion of the SpanishAmerican War in 1898, the United States suddenly found itself in possession of the Philippines,
Puerto Rico, and Guam.
William Howard Taft, elected in 1908, was President of the United States in 1911. Like his
predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft led his administration in aggressively pursuing and breaking up
monopolies, or trusts. The rapid expansion of business in the United States had led to the formation of
many large companies, such as Standard Oil. Men such as J. Pierpont Morgan rode this wave of
prosperity and growth to obtain massive personal wealth. Morgan’s company, U.S. Steel, was the
world’s first billion-dollar corporation. Powerful press czars such as William Randolph Hearst
introduced the world to mass-circulation newspapers for the first time during this period. Hearst’s
practice of “yellow journalism” sought to sensationalize stories in order to maximize sales.
The growth of big business during the early 20th Century also led to a more active labor movement.
Immigrants, attracted by the increasing opportunities in America, streamed across the Atlantic in record
numbers. Many of them accepted low wage jobs with manufacturers, often with less than ideal working
environments. Concerns about working conditions were galvanized with the Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory Fire in March 1911. That fire, in which 146 garment workers lost their lives, still stands as the
deadliest industrial accident in the history of New York City.
What was going on in Pittsburgh?
Post-Reconstruction Pittsburgh moved along a path very similar to that of the United States as a whole
during that time. The organization of large manufacturers by entrepreneurs such as Andrew
Carnegie and the influx of European immigrants, many of them German and Irish, quickly made
Pittsburgh one of the country’s industrial capitals. Between 1870-1920, the city’s population increased
nearly seven times over. By 1911, Pittsburgh produced half of the nation’s steel.
Culturally, the mass migration of African Americans to the city made the Hill District a center of jazz
music. Although most of those African Americans had come to Pittsburgh in search of money and
opportunity, they found both in short supply. Segregation was nearly as bad as in the South and
industrial jobs were hard to come by. Many blacks had to scrape together an existence working odd jobs
and living in boarding houses, much like Jeremy in Joe Turner. In the world of sports, the Pittsburgh
Pirates rode the success of Honus Wagner, considered by many to be the greatest shortstop ever, to
World Series berths in 1903 and 1909, winning the latter. Of course, Major League Baseball was still
segregated at this time, so African American athletes played in the Negro Leagues.
Sources:
Credo Reference
Ezra Bowen, ed. This Fabulous Century, Volume I: 1900-1910. New York: Time Life Books,
1970.
INTERVIEW WITH THE DRAMATURGE:
JOEL WHITE ‘13 AND DIRECTOR ARTISIA GREEN
JW: August Wilson is regarded as one of America’s most
influential contemporary playwrights. How is his cycle of
plays and, by extension, his storytelling regarding African
American history important to you as a director and theatre
historian?
AG: Wilson’s plays are what narratives that affirm both my
place in the world and on the American stage. They also
provide a rationale argument as to the forces that have shaped
the black American experience historically and presently.
JW: What drew you to Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
specifically?
AG: Wilson transitioned from this world in October 2005 and directing this show, his
favorite play, at this particular time allows me to honor him. It is a ritual of
remembrance and part of my spiritual and communal responsibility as a black
American – to re/member. In terms of the play, Harold Loomis’ journey to come to
terms with his authentic self via facing his past parallels my own journey for the past
four years or so. And in terms of the production value, I thought the play offered our
senior majors of color an opportunity to wrestle with language, physicality, and
dramaturgy of their own cultural experience before they graduated next spring. One of
the actors of color stated that Joe Turner was the quintessential master work that
allowed him to exercise all of his talents cultivated during the past four years of his
tenure here at the College. And I agree. Wilson is “The Bard,” of black American
theatre! He is one of the best and most challenging playwrights for an actor to cut
their teeth into.
I was watching one of the rehearsals of the band and it occurred to me that this
production was forcing everyone to grow in new and interesting ways. There are
students who had never played musical instrumentation in a regimented way who are
now doing so. Students who have never performed on the mainstage or any stage who
are now suddenly expanding to create fully-realized characters and command large
spaces and actors who have never sang the Delta blues who are doing their best to
capture the spirit of those early performers. So this production of Joe Turner has
created truly special opportunities for the personal and professional growth for all the
students involved.
JW: How does this production showcase your interpretation of Joe Turner’s Come and
Gone ?
AG: Scholar Mary Bogumil wrote, “Wilson lets the audience know that those ancestral
voices must be heard; otherwise they can paralyze…confound…or contribute to
disintegration instead of spiritual reconciliation.” So, I thought about that and I
listened to the air and was given the following, “make the unseen forces, both the
ancestral and those which seek to debilitate one’s spirit, more visible.” Joe Turner , as
is many of Wilson’s other plays in the cycle, is all about confronting the metaphysical.
Thus, this production gives a strong presence to the other world and I’ve tried to use
every window of opportunity to open the door and welcome it in. For example, we
invoke the presence of and pay homage to the African ancestral spirits at the top of the
show with the pouring of libations, the recitation of the Mojubar, and the use of the
Eggun Staff. We see the memories that haunt Loomis and the presence of ancestors
through the walls. And with the exception of Bertha and Seth’s room, there are no
doors which allow for people to simply appear without announcing themselves –
increasing everyone’s visibility. This acknowledgement of the invisibles, the other
world, that which has been repressed or forgotten is a necessary step in the healing
process. And making the invisible visible allows Loomis to disembark, to symbolically
face and unload his cargo in order that he might move forward.
JW: What do you hope audiences will think about when they watch this play? What
would you like them to take away from it?
AG: The beautiful thing about art is that each person that encounters the work will
undoubtedly bring their own lens and make their own meaning.
JW: The central character in this play finds peace when he finds his song. Do you feel
you have found yours?
AG: Actually, Harold Loomis finds peace when he unleashes his song. Bynum reminds
us of this when he says, “the song is there, you just forgot how to sing it.” Looking at it
from the perspective of unleashing and “claiming what is mine” as opposed to finding it
is an important distinction. Claiming implies that the song is already present. Finding
implies that the song is lost or in need of creation. So yes, I have claimed my song. I
am the sum total of my past and present and have “accepted the responsibility for my
presence in the world” as Wilson says. Have I finished self-actualizing? No, the
ancestors will continue to teach me until the day I stop breathing. But like Loomis at
the end of the play I too face the world, knowing my place in it, with both heart and
knife in hand.
AUGUST WILSON AND MAGICAL REALISM
What is magical realism?
From Credo Reference: “A type of post-modernist fiction that mixes elements of fantasy, fable, and
folklore with realistic narrative, imbuing it with a fabulous or dreamlike quality. It mixes the depiction of
everyday events with fantastic elements to create an apparent discordance which deliberately undermines
the text and eventually the authority of the novel form itself.”
How does August Wilson employ it?
Wilson, unlike many other authors, is very explicit in
naming his influences. He refers to his largest influences
as the “Four B’s”: Romare Bearden, Imamu Amiri
Baraka, Jorge Luis Borges, and the blues. Borges was a
Latin American short story writer who often employed
magical realism. By his own account, Wilson found
Borges’ method of storytelling fascinating. Mary Lusky
Friedman posits a “Borgesean Paradigm” which
succinctly describes this method:
Mill
Hand’s
Lunch
Bucket
by
Romare
Bearden
A mishap sets in motion a protagonist, who responds to the calamity by setting out on a
journey. In the course of this journey Borges’ hero travels through surroundings that are
progressively more impoverished and irreal until at last he arrives at a structure that walls
him in. Immured there, his is privy to a marvelous but blighting experience, an experience
that blasts his selfhood and annihilates him.
Credo mentions many authors who employ this technique, but puts special emphasis on author Gabriel
Garcia Marquez, whose books, like those of his contemporary Borges, “transcend the local world of the
individual into a timeless unity of experience.” This same quality is prevalent in Wilson’s works,
particularly with characters such as the ever-present (but rarely seen) Aunt Ester. Snodgrass describes
Ester as “a living conscience for Wilson’s cycle, Ester is the voice of Africa, the culture-keeper of
America’s black residents.” Aunt Ester, like many of Wilson’s more magical literary devices, is linked
directly with slavery. At the approximate age of 322 in Two Trains Running, which takes place in 1969,
Ester would have been born just two years after slavery began in colonial North America.
Where is magical realism in Joe Turner?
The magical elements of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone are similarly rooted in slavery. Rutherford Selig,
the peddler with a nearly supernatural ability to find people, derives his talents from his family’s history of
slave catching. Even more significantly, Harold Loomis’s juba-induced vision shows him the skeletons of
the potential slaves who did not survive the dismal Middle Passage. Wilson frequently references this socalled City of Bones, which in Gem of the Ocean he introduces as “a mythic monument, an Atlantic
burial ground.” Wilson himself describes Loomis’s vision as an epiphany: “[Loomis] is in effect
witnessing himself being born. He understands then that his existence is the manifest act of the Creator.
Therefore he has to be filled with God’s majesty.”
This culmination of Loomis’ journey fits squarely into the Borgesean Paradigm described above. The
protagonist initiates a journey that is set in motion by a particular mishap—in this case, his servitude to
Joe Turner. In search of the solution to his problem (the location of his wife), Loomis experiences his
epiphany: the “marvelous but blighting” experience described by Friedman. Nevertheless, Loomis’ path
seems to deviate from Borges’ script in the end, as the Song of Self-Sufficiency allows him to be better
off. He is indeed “annihilated” in a way, but he is born anew as a man at peace with himself.
Bynum Walker is similarly a character with magical qualities. As a conjure man, he uses ritual to perform
acts of supernatural binding. Also, his experience with the Shiny Man draws on both African and
Christian mysticism. The Shiny Man, whom Snodgrass describes as “an agent of the black Diaspora and
a bringer of good fortune,” is similar in many ways to John the Baptist, the man who formally began
Jesus’ path to ministry, as well as Ogun, the Yoruba god of iron. Even Bertha has some magical qualities.
Her ritual of purifying the kitchen and her cathartic laughter are reminiscent in many ways of the female
African shaman.
Sources
Credo Reference
Rocha, Mark William. “August Wilson and the Four B’s: Influences.” August Wilson: A
Casebook. Ed. Marilyn Elkins. New York: Garland Publishing, 2000. 3-15.
Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. August Wilson: A Literary Companion. Jefferson: McFarland and
Company, 2004.
WANT TO LEARN MORE?
Check out these helpful sources:
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Bigsby, Christopher, ed. The Cambridge Companion to August Wilson. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Bogumil, Mary. Understanding August Wilson. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
2011.
Elam, Harry Justin. The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson. Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 2004.
Elkins, Marilyn, ed. August Wilson: A Casebook. New York: Garland Publishing, 2000.
Hornsby, Alton. A Companion to African American History. Malden: Blackwell Publishing,
2005.
Shannon, Sandra Garrett. The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson. Washington: Howard
University Press, 1995.
Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. August Wilson: A Literary Companion. Jefferson: McFarland &
Company, 2004.