As Rep opens "Ma Rainey," playwright moves on

As August Wilson holes up on Capitol Hill, writing "Radio Golf" (the final script in his 10-play cycle about 20th-century black America), the Seattle Repertory Theatre is presenting one of the first works in Wilson's vaunted cycle: "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom."

Relaxed and affable, despite pressing deadlines ("Radio Golf" is slated to debut in April at Yale Repertory Theatre), Wilson recently voiced some relief that his decade-by-decade cycle is nearly done. For one thing, he noted during an afternoon conversation at Seattle Rep, soon he can set his plays in any era he wants.

"I don't really have a sense of something coming to an end," declared the author, whose current Broadway play, set in 1904 Pittsburgh ("Gem of the Ocean") demonstrates his growing interest in meshing realism and fantasy. "I have plans for lots of other things now, like this comedy I'm working on about a group of coffin-makers who go on strike."

But Seattle-based Wilson does see "Ma Rainey" as a bona fide career milestone. And not just because it was his first play to hit Broadway, draw national raves and win a New York Drama Critics Circle Award. (He's since won two Pulitzers, a Tony Award and many more honors.)

"It was a breakthrough because it was different than anything I'd written before, with a lot more dialogue," noted Wilson of "Ma Rainey," which cross-weaves blues music with cultural commerce and social tensions during a 1927 Chicago recording session.

Conceived in 1976, but not completed in a full draft until 1981,"Ma Rainey" was also the conscious effort of a struggling writer to grow as a craftsman.

"What happened was I raised my sights," said the husky, bearded Wilson, who at age 59 looks much as he did while living in St. Paul, Minn., and penning "Ma Rainey" in longhand.

"My play 'Jitney' had just been rejected by the O'Neill Playwrights Conference twice. So I thought, "OK, it's time to rise above your talent.' But how do you do that?' The answer was, 'You can write below your talent, can't you?' So I decided to try writing the best play ever written, and it really freed me up. All kinds of ideas came into my head."

Music was pivotal

Those ideas often were triggered by music. An avid blues fan, and admirer of Ma Rainey's earthy, potent vocal style in the 1920s and her pioneering role in popularizing the blues, Wilson said the only historical research he did was gleaned "from reading the extensive liner notes on one of her albums. Anything else I needed to know I felt I could get from listening to the music."

Music also helped him create four pivotal characters in the play, black instrumentalists hired to back up Rainey — that is, after Ma shows up late, and comes to terms with two white music businessmen out to exploit her.

As the delays drag on up in the recording studio, down in the band room the musicians fall into a looping conversation which gets increasingly tense and, suddenly, lethally violent.

"I tried to the best of my ability to write these characters based on their instruments," Wilson notes.

"Levee's the trumpet player, kind of strident and out there like the trumpet sound. Slow Drag is the bass player, sort of laid back. And Toledo the piano player just appeared to me out of nowhere, walking into the room with a newspaper under his arm. He's very important to the play, because I realized any man who in 1927 articulates what he does about black people — that they're history's 'leftovers' — is gonna have to die."

Wilson credits Village Voice drama critic Michael Feingold for spotting the play's merit, and helping select it for a workshop at the O'Neill Center. There, Wilson struck up a partnership with director Lloyd Richards, who also went on to stage "Fences," "The Piano Lesson" and other Wilson hits.

Career boost

A huge career boost for both Wilson, and newcomer actor Charles "Roc" Dutton ( Levee in the 1984 Broadway debut of "Ma Rainey"), the play has become one of the author's most-produced and admired dramas. The Seattle Rep's version — directed by Jonathan Wilson (no relation), who staged August Wilson's "Seven Guitars" at the Rep in 1997 — will be its first major mounting in Seattle since it was performed at Pioneer Square Theatre, in 1988.

Though under the gun to finish "Radio Golf," set in the 1990s and the cycle's only play to focus on affluent black Americans, Wilson made time to attend the Rep's first rehearsal of "Ma Rainey." And he's pleased this run features several black Seattle actors (including Cynthia Jones as Rainey and Reginald André Jackson as her stuttering nephew Sylvester).

But a panned recent Broadway version of "Ma Rainey" with Whoopi Goldberg as the singer and (again) Dutton as Levee is mentioned, Wilson winced.

"It just wasn't good," he stated flatly. "Whoopi had wanted to do it for years, and I thought it was a brilliant idea. Whoopi can act, can't she? I don't think it was beyond her talent.

"But instead of playing the character, she played Whoopi. And there were a lot of other things wrong — the costumes, the sets. In retrospect there were so many red flags, we should have just pulled the plug."

A better "Ma Rainey" at Seattle Rep would probably be heartening right now. Then again, Wilson is very much focused now on "Radio Golf," and post-cycle projects.

As he pulled on his coat to head back to his writing, Wilson reflected, "You know, I've got lots of new ideas." Then he glanced up at a framed photo of a well-known actor and clown, and flashed a bemused smile. "Hey, maybe I'll even write a play for Bill Irwin," the writer declared. And he wasn't joking.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com