Stage Review - How I Learned What I Learned (Seattle Rep)
Stage Review - How I Learned What I Learned
Presented By: Seattle Rep (Bagley Wright Theatre), Seattle, WA
Date Reviewed: Wednesday, April 26, 2023
Reviewed By: Greg Heilman
August Wilson and Seattle have a history. It’s one that I didn’t know a lot about before relocating here, but nonetheless it’s a pretty important one. It began in 1990 when Wilson moved here, and continued through his residence until his untimely death in 2005. He was raised in Pittsburgh, which anyone familiar with his work at large, will recognize as the setting for many of his plays and other works, but it was here in Seattle, and through his partnership with the Seattle Rep that his creativity reached a new level. The Rep originally produced his seminal work, The American Century Cycle, his series of ten plays set in Pittsburgh and which chronicle the experience and plight of African Americans during each decade of the 20th Century. Not only were many of those plays written here, but The Rep staged them before they moved onward to Broadway and beyond. Two of the more popular plays in the series, Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, are multiple award winners, the former winning a Tony for best play and best performance by a lead actor in a play (James Earl Jones) for the original Broadway production, and best revival and again best performance by a lead actor in a play (Denzel Washington) for the 2010 Broadway revival. Washington was also nominated for an Oscar for his performance in the film version of Fences, and the screen version of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom garnered multiple Academy Award nominations and two wins. Another of Wilson’s works, How I Learned What I Learned, was also written during his Seattle residence, and is more of a personal memoir than many of his other works. Again set in his hometown of Pittsburgh, How I Learned What I Learned looks back at his own life through the lens of the 20th Century Black experience. The Seattle Rep has brought this one person show, originally performed by the playwright himself, back to its stage as the penultimate show in its 2022/23 season, this time with Steven Anthony Jones taking up the performance mantle, and running through May 14 at its Bagley Wright Theatre.
This current production, and Steven Anthony' Jones’ performance in particular, is surely something that August Wilson would be proud of. Jones captures the spirit of Wilson in this performance, mixing humor with hard truths in this telling, and there are plenty of both. The play discusses a series of life lessons that the playwright learned through his lifetime, and the experiences that framed them. Wilson was a child growing up in Pittsburgh, and came face to face with a racism that wasn’t always explicit, but always there at the very least residing under the surface. Throughout the show, there are plenty of examples of this, one such recollection being a time when he’s approached by someone who, in what is an all too common occurrence, “doesn’t see color”, the playwright quickly turning it back on the individual, pointing out the fallacy in the individual’s statement by asking if he, in fact, mentioned that to the other, white people in the room, or if he only mentioned it to the “black person”. He also shows that public perception on race has always been something perpetrated by the media, our modern time not having a monopoly on that. Today, we have social media, but in the early 20th Century there was Webster’s dictionary which was responsible for providing archaic and ignorant definitions of black and white, definitions that would be taken and passed down from generation to generation, until it became part of our DNA. The pointing out of this doesn’t excuse it for sure, nor does it excuse any of the behavior that results from the systemic nature of the racism, but it at least puts it into some context. That’s the beauty of this work, it provides a perspective that looks at the root cause of generations of racism, while also allowing for a better understand of each other’s viewpoints just a little bit more than maybe there was previously.
There’s a lot to like about the telling of this. The design and delivery of this work each harken back to the work and stylings of Mark Twain. The perfect mix of poetry and prose, humor and truth, it’s a formula that worked for Twain and August Wilson takes it to different place with How I Learned What I Learned. Steven Anthony Jones’ portrayal is one that makes the audience feel, like Wilson did in his version, welcomed, it’s disarming in the way it uses humor to provide a relatability to the character, even when the audience cannot possibly relate to the experiences that Wilson went through. It’s uncanny, and it’s genius, and it’s delivered impeccably by Jones.
Seattle Rep has produced its fair share of one person shows. This season alone, the theatre has put up Madeline Sayet’s Where We Belong and Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me in its Bagley Wright Theatre. Shows like this aren’t as simple as one would think to be done successfully. There’s a lot of stage for one person to traverse, so while the dramatic heavy lifting is typically done by the actor, the supporting work that would typically be left to an ensemble of other actors here is taken up by the creatives, the sound, lighting, and scenic design. Ultimately, though, it comes down to the director to bring the playwright’s vision to life, and Tim Bond has done that wonderfully here. Steven Anthony Jones is exactly where he needs to be, whether onstage or off, interacting with the audience in just the right way. I was also struck immediately by Nina Ball’s set, simple, but with a turn of the century industrial feel, a background that resembles a brick wall which doubles as a vehicle for Resean Davanté Johnson’s projections, ranging from textual titles for each of Wilson’s lessons, to films and stills of the Pittsburgh of Wilson’s youth and other scenes. Scattered about the stage are also other set pieces that Xavier Pierce’s lighting help to bring focus to at the right times in the play, additional context to Jones’ delivery of Wilson’s monologues. Tim Bond brings all of these creative and technical pieces together in a concierto of sorts to produce a piece that deals with some heavy subject matter, is not preachy at all, but definitely has an emotional punch.
Steven Anthony Jones is August Wilson. That’s not just the premise of the Seattle Rep’s production of Wilson’s autobiographical How I Learned What I Learned, it’s also what makes this show a success. August Wilson was a Mark Twain for our time, and this folksy recounting of his life through the lens of the 20th Century African American experience, as portrayed by Jones is the next best thing to having Wilson onstage himself. It’s a wonderfully designed and executed version of a piece of art that tackles issues that are both timely and unfortunately timeless, but does so with humor and heart, and with a poetic sensibility that is, in the end, both engaging and truly enlightening.
How I Learned What I Learned runs through May 15 at the Seattle Rep’s Bagley Wright Theatre. For more information and tickets, visit https://www.seattlerep.org/. Note that flashing lights are used in the production and that the play contains language that some my find uncomfortable or offensive.
Photo credit: Jenny Graham