Actors Theatre to open Wilson's "Seven Guitars"

For actor, playwright and director Colman Domingo, directing August Wilson’s play “Seven Guitars” has been a kind of homecoming.

In one sense, the production that opens at Actors Theatre of Louisville marks Domingo’s return to directing — which has taken a backseat to his playwriting and acting endeavors that over the past decade have led him to Broadway.

The characters in Wilson’s play also enable this Philadelphia native to return home and rediscover voices he knows from his family and childhood community.

“This is a backyard that I understand, and I understand these people — their swagger and language,” he said.

The backyard Domingo referred to is the setting of “Seven Guitars,” which is part of Wilson’s 10-play Pittsburgh cycle that chronicles the African-American experience through the 20th century. “Seven Guitars” takes place in the late 1940s and in the midst of the Great Migration that spanned 60 years and saw the movement of 6 million blacks from the rural South to Northeastern, Midwestern and Western cities. 

“Here we are in this Pittsburgh backyard and there’s everything from the South,” said Domingo about the play as he lists foods the characters eat and the fact that the play features chicken coops in the neighborhood.

As with other Wilson plays in the series, music forms a foundation in this story that begins moment after the funeral of guitarist Floyd Barton in 1948 only to launch into a flashback of the events that led to his death. In the weeks prior, Floyd, a musician whose fate seems tipped towards the precipice of fame, has a hit song on the radio and is prepared to follow up on it with a trip to Chicago with other musician friends. But Floyd, who also has been in jail on dubious charges, needs to get his guitar out of the pawn shop where he left it before his arrest.

Meanwhile, Floyd regularly visits the backyard of an apartment building housing Vera, his girlfriend, who doubts his promises of loyalty toward her; Louise, a single woman whose husband walked out on her years before; and Hedley, an older man who sees spirits including the ghost of Charles (Buddy) Bolden, the legendary New Orleans trumpeter who suffered from schizophrenia and died in an asylum.

The play deals with the inequalities and injustices suffered by blacks as a main vein of American history reaching back to slavery. Domingo talked about the way injuries that have been endured over long histories as well as the joys maintained during hard times via music and shared meals make Wilson’s work relevant today. That history, for example, motivates some characters to possess certain kinds of weapons.

“The play addresses violence and how we look to take care of ourselves in society,” he said. “There are characters who carry guns, and at one point there’s talk about what the knife represents.”

And then there is the music.

“The way Wilson has written this piece — it’s structured like the blues. It feels like music how a scene will end and then a high note (on a guitar) will come in,” he said.

In addition, Domingo had the production’s music director, Jon Spurney, write original work for the Louisville production. Spurney has been part of several Actors Theatre productions including “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” “Rock and Roll: The Reunion Tour” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and worked with Broadway productions.

Domingo said some of that music underscores particular characters’ temperaments. But there is other music that wafts over the radio they listen to in the backyard as they play cards and talk about their lives, dreams and troubles.

To heighten that musical aspect, set designer William Boles has created a stage that Domingo said aims to “look like music.” To achieve that effect, Boles’ designs are inspired by 20th-century artist Romare Bearden, who was reared in Pittsburgh and is noted for his depictions of African-American life and his collage works. (His work was used on The Roots’ cover art for their 2014 album “… And Then You Shoot Your Cousin.”)

Against that backdrop, Domingo is striving to show love in this play — with black men revealing genuine affection and friendship toward each other in a way not often depicted in the media today.

That warmth is akin to qualities found in plays Domingo has penned, including “A Boy and His Soul,” “Wild With Happy” and “Dot,” which premiered at this year’s Humana Festival of New American Plays. Like Wilson’s plays, they too deal with loss, although the loss is often mitigated with the magical notions from childhood.

Interestingly, roles Domingo himself has played on Broadway stand in sharp contrast to any feelings of warmth. They include the crafty lawyer Billy Flynn in “Chicago” and the classic minstrel show figure of Mr. Bones, which he played in director Susan Stroman’s production of “The Scottsboro Boys” about nine African-American boys who in 1931 were falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama. That later role embraced the sharp cynicism of minstrelsy created after the Civil War by white people in blackface who portrayed them with disparaging qualities that reinforced racist attitudes.

That range of experience in a theater career gives this director a specific perspective on Wilson’s work as it relates to theater and to history, even though Domingo has been in only one Wilson play. He played Gabriel in the 2000 production of “Fences” at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, Calif. The  experience opened his eyes.

“I fell in love with the people I recognized,” he said. “It was the first time I recognized my cousins, aunts and uncles.”

Domingo said he knew only a little about Wilson prior to his 2000 performance. Wilson by then had nabbed a slew of awards, including a 1987 Tony Award for Best Play for “Fences” and two Pulitzer Prizes for “Fences” (1987) and “The Piano Lesson” (1990).

“I knew he was a celebrated writer,” said Domingo, now 45. “He was an older guy, and his plays were epic and long, but later got trimmed down. I knew that great actors did his work.”

In recent years, Domingo has forged a stronger connection to Wilson’s work that stems from how it connects to persistent societal problems. While “Seven Guitars” doesn’t directly address the issues involved with America’s immediate struggles with race, prejudice and violence, Domingo said it serves a purpose in helping us examine who we are in our own communities and as a society.

“We’re having to grapple with ourselves and ask questions. We all have whatever issues we have, but we can figure out that we can come together and hear another point of view. That way we can come together,” he said.

Reporter Elizabeth Kramer can be reached at (502) 582-4682. Follow her on Twitter at @arts_bureau.

IF YOU GO

What: “Seven Guitars” by August Wilson. Directed by Colman Domingo. Actors including Joniece Abbott-Pratt (Vera Dotson), Joaquina Kalukango (Ruby), Forrest McClendon (Canewell), J. Alphonse Nicholson (Floyd “Schoolboy” Barton), Harold Surratt (Hedley), Sharon Washington (Louise), and Bowman Wright (Red Carter).

When: Sept.1-20 (Open captioned performance: Sept. 12, 3 p.m. Audio described performance: Sept. 13, 2.30 p.m.)

Where: Actors Theatre of Louisville, Pamela Brown Auditorium, 316 W. Main St.

Special After-Performance Events: Sept. 11, Community Conversation about cultural issues inspired by “Seven Guitars” following 8 p.m. performance; Sept. 13, Conversation with the Artists following 2:30 p.m. performance.

Cost: $25 to $59

Information: (502) 584-1205; www.actorstheatre.org