Adapting The Piano Lesson, one of the most often produced plays of August Wilson’s American Century Cycle, was equally intimidating and thrilling for co-writers Virgil Williams and Malcolm Washington. “It’s sacred text for sure,” says Washington, who took on the challenge for his directorial debut. Williams adds: “It was a stew of fear, reverence, and respect.”

In the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, set in 1930s Pittsburgh, a Black American family’s disagreement about what to do with an heirloom piano excavates questions about their lineage and legacy. While sharecropper Boy Willie (John David Washington) wants to sell the piano to buy back the land on which his ancestors were enslaved, his sister Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler) refuses, knowing the priceless history that the instrument holds. 

With his work on The Piano Lesson, the fourth installment of Wilson’s 10-part magnum opus, Williams demonstrates the same dexterity and subtlety as he has with previous historical projects that tell Black American stories through the lens of family. In 2017 he co-wrote Mudbound, a tense drama about racism in the post-World War II South, which earned him an Oscar nomination. A few years later, he adapted an Iraq War widow’s memoir for Denzel Washington’s A Journal for Jordan. 

Williams and Washington’s The Piano Lesson pays tribute to the play’s history and Wilson’s canon, while also taking it beyond the stage by drawing on elements from contemporary cinema like horror and the supernatural. “Malcolm was able to let his imagination run wild with Virgil Williams,” says Todd Black, who, with longtime partner Denzel, produced The Piano Lesson in addition to previous Wilson adaptations including Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. “He was able to amplify the ghost story and take it out of the house into the world with the flashbacks and the Crawford Grill [a Pittsburgh Hill District jazz club]. We’ve opened it up even more than Fences and Ma Rainey, so we’re really happy about that aspect.”

Williams describes bringing the legendary play to the screen — and August Wilson to a new generation.

A young Boy Willie scatters seeds

On Playwright August Wilson’s American Century Cycle as a Cultural Mainstay

It’s a fixture in my history. Even though The Piano Lesson came out when I was a teenager, it cemented itself as one of the things that marked my culture. I heard things in the language that I hadn’t necessarily heard before. 

All the plays contain themes of legacy, inheritance, and connection that the Great Migration couldn’t break. We’re connected through our ancestors — through where we come from, where we are, and where we want to go. There’s an aspirational quality to all the plays and, occasionally, you’ll get a dose of magical realism, the supernatural. Wilson is such a chronicler of the African American experience, the diaspora, but it’s so honest and poetic; it manifests as important truth that transcends the African American experience.

The Charles’s piano, carved with likenesses of their ancestors who were enslaved

On Bringing the Play from the Page to the Screen

It’s how I approach any adaptation: What can I give to it, and how can I play a small part in transporting this to cinema? What me and Malcolm did felt like a college-level course, because we couldn’t change anything until we took the whole thing as it was. He would read even punctuation, and I would read it back as I typed it in. That’s when we could start making cinematic adjustments. It was like taking an engine apart and putting it back together, over and over and over again, so that we could get it running right. The process was: lay it out, cut, add, move, flip, and put it back.

Outside the Crawford Grill, famed Pittsburgh Hill District jazz club. 

On How Adapting a Play is Different from Adapting a Book

I’ve adapted a memoir, a piece of fiction, magazine articles, plays — they’re all different. My approach is about listening, because the story will tell you what it needs. Part of that skill is learning yourself and your own ego — its wants and desires — and being able to take it and use it if need be. Denzel Washington said this at the Toronto International Film Festival, and it resonated: “You have to meet it where it is.” There’s a tacit understanding that everybody needed to meet this where it was because it’s August Wilson.

A Bible, holy water, cross, and candle.

On Writing a Period Piece for a New Generation of August Wilson Fans

It’s always about getting to the truth of the thing. It doesn’t matter if it’s a story that takes place in the eleventh century, you can still relate to the human emotion. Loss, triumph, love — all these things are timeless. There’s a reason that the Acropolis and the Pantheon are still standing: because the integrity of the construction is utterly sound. And that’s August Wilson.

This is August Wilson for this generation — full stop. Me and Malcolm were like, “Ghost story!” — we said it at the same time. And we were like, “This is for them.” It’s an opportunity to give some history in a cinematic way.

On What’s Distinctive About this Contemporary Take

The question that August asks is, “What happens when someone steals your history? What do you do with it once you steal it back?” [Siblings] Boy Willie and Berniece — neither one of them is wrong, and they are both right. In fact, right or wrong doesn’t apply. For me, the simplicity and symmetry of that, it’s unassailable.

We added an implication that you pass it on to the next generation because there’s more to come — where you see Boy Willie in the field and you see Maretha playing [the instrument]. If your history matters, that means your future does too. And while you’re in the present, put your hands on the piano, sing, make music, whatever that means for you.

Additional reporting by Sarah Rodman.