The Power and Poetry of the Blues

Ma Rainey sings with the voice of the rural, Black south; her flashy persona and ravaging blues a conduit and a salve for the joy and pain of generations. But the musical winds are ever-shifting, and brash trumpeter, Levee, burns for a more progressive sound – whatever the cost may be. Another great American Classic from August Wilson – a poet whose superpower is revealing the beauty in the everyday, peeling back the veneer to reveal a human condition that binds us all together. A powerhouse play with powerhouse performances ringing out from the Hill Theatre. Do not miss it. Running June 21 - September 7.

Featuring Greta Oglesby, Nathan Barlow, Bryant Louis Bentley, Sydney Lolita Cusic, David Daniel, Chiké Johnson, Brian Mani, Lester Purry. The role of Ma Rainey was played by Dee Dee Batteast through July 3.

Contains adult themes & language. Please contact the Box Office at 608-588-2361, or email [email protected] for specifics.

Summary

August Wilson returns to the Hill for a second play in The American Century Cycle. It’s Chicago in the roaring 20s, and blues legend Ma Rainey is at the apex of the industry, her gritty style and bawdy blues disrupting the broadly popular music of the day; her music a gift and catharsis to generations of enslaved and newly freed Black Americans. As Ma and her entourage are delayed on the way to cut her new album, her band – trumpeter Levee, bassist Slow Drag, pianist Toledo and trombonist Cutler - gets to talking about their pasts and futures. Levee is an ambitious and talented young man, with a fraught history and a progressive new sound that may not mesh with Ma’s version of the Blues. As the band bides time, Levee’s frustration grows, leading to conflicts with Ma and unsteady deals with the white producers that may threaten everything.

Casting subject to change.

August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc.

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Portable Prologue - Apple Podcast

Director's Notes

It’s 1927 and blues singer Gertrude “Ma Rainey” has come to Chicago to record some of her songs. At the peak of her popularity on the southern touring circuit, her most recent recordings have not sold well in the north and the record producers are anxious to turn this session into commercial success. As musical tastes appear to be shifting from Ma’s traditional “tent show” blues to a more “sophisticated” and refined style of music, the record company is hoping to convince Ma to bend to that sophistication with a more upbeat and progressive sound. Levee, Ma’s mercurial trumpet player, haunted by a traumatic past and bursting with ambition, is determined to be on the front lines of this new music. To ensure his success, he shares his compositions with the studio producer hoping to start his own band and play this new music. He is convinced his songs will give the people something to dance to and “forget about their troubles.” However, when Ma arrives it becomes increasingly clear that the music will be played and recorded her way or no recording will take place. It truly is her way or the highway. At a time when Black women were allowed little power in this country much less in the music business, Ma knows her worth and refuses to compromise in any way. Ma and Levee clash and frustrations boil over leading to an inevitable and haunting conclusion.

August Wilson deeply believed that until Black people in this country reached back into our past, claimed it, owned it, and took hold of it instead of running from it, that we would remain unmoored and unable to claim our rightful place as Americans in a country that we built for free. His passion for sharing our ways, our language and our hearts in an unapologetic way has created a poetry like no other. He has taken our beauty, our ugliness, our rhythms and our dreams and made them holy. For me, his plays are church. They are scriptures that give us a song to sing, a place to call home, and a porch light that never goes out.

- Gavin Dillon Lawrence, Director of August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom