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The Century Cycle #5
Seven Guitars
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences and The Piano Lesson
Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play
It is the spring of 1948. In the still cool evenings of Pittsburgh's Hill district, familiar sounds fill the air. A rooster crows. Screen doors slam. The laughter of friends gathered for a backyard card game rises just above the wail of a mother who has lost her son. And there's the sound of the blues, played and sung by young men and women with little more than a guitar in their hands and a dream in their hearts. August Wilson's Seven Guitars is the sixth chapter in his continuing theatrical saga that explores the hope, heartbreak, and heritage of the African-American experience in the twentieth century. The story follows a small group of friends who gather following the untimely death of Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton, a local blues guitarist on the edge of stardom. Together, they reminisce about his short life and discover the unspoken passions and undying spirit that live within each of them.
Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play
It is the spring of 1948. In the still cool evenings of Pittsburgh's Hill district, familiar sounds fill the air. A rooster crows. Screen doors slam. The laughter of friends gathered for a backyard card game rises just above the wail of a mother who has lost her son. And there's the sound of the blues, played and sung by young men and women with little more than a guitar in their hands and a dream in their hearts. August Wilson's Seven Guitars is the sixth chapter in his continuing theatrical saga that explores the hope, heartbreak, and heritage of the African-American experience in the twentieth century. The story follows a small group of friends who gather following the untimely death of Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton, a local blues guitarist on the edge of stardom. Together, they reminisce about his short life and discover the unspoken passions and undying spirit that live within each of them.
107 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
61 people are currently reading
1317 people want to read
About the author
August Wilson
66 books572 followersAmerican playwright August Wilson won a Pulitzer Prize for
Fences
in 1985 and for
The Piano Lesson
in 1987.
His literary legacy embraces the ten series and received twice for drama for The Pittsburgh Cycle . Each depicted the comic and tragic aspects of the African-American experience, set in different decade of the 20th century.
Daisy Wilson, an African American cleaning woman from North Carolina, in the hill district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, bore Frederick August Kittel, Junior, the fourth of six children, to Frederick August Kittel, Senior, a German immigrant baker. From North Carolina, maternal grandmother of Wilson earlier sought a better life and walked to Pennsylvania. After his fifth year, his mother raised the children alone in a two-room apartment above a grocery store at 1727 Bedford Avenue.
After death of Frederick August Kittel, Senior, in 1965, his son changed his name to August Wilson to honor his mother.
In 1968, Wilson co-founded the black horizon theater in the hill district of Pittsburgh alongside Rob Penny, his friend. People first performed his Recycling for audiences in small theaters and public housing community centers. Among these early efforts, he revised Jitney more than two decades later as part of his ten-cycle on 20th-century Pittsburgh.
Wilson married three times. His first marriage to Brenda Burton lasted from 1969 to 1972. She bore him Sakina Ansari, a daughter, in 1970.
Vernell Lillie founded of the Kuntu repertory theatre at the University of Pittsburgh in 1974 and, two years later, directed The Homecoming of Wilson in 1976.
Wilson also co-founded the workshop of Kuntu to bring African-Americans together and to assist them in publication and production. Both organizations still act.
Claude Purdy, friend and director, suggested to Wilson to move to Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1978 and helped him secure a job with educational scripts for the science museum. In 1980, he received a fellowship for the center in Minneapolis. Wilson long associated with the penumbra theatre company, which gave the premieres, of Saint Paul.
In 1981, he married to Judy Oliver, a social worker, and they divorced in 1990.
Wilson received many honorary degrees, including an honorary doctor of humanities from the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as a member of the board of trustees from 1992 until 1995.
Wilson got a best known Tony award and the New York circle of drama critics; he authored Ma Rainey's Black Bottom , and Joe Turner's Come and Gone .
In 1994, Wilson left Saint Paul and developed a relationship with Seattle repertory theatre. Ultimately, only Seattle repertory theater in the country produced all works in his ten-cycle and his one-man show How I Learned What I Learned .
Constanza Romero, his costume designer and third wife from 1994, bore Azula Carmen, his second daughter.
In 2005, August Wilson received the Anisfield-Wolf lifetime achievement award.
Wilson reported diagnosis with liver cancer in June 2005 with three to five months to live. He passed away at Swedish medical center in Seattle, and people interred his body at Greenwood cemetery, Pittsburgh on 8 October 2005.
His literary legacy embraces the ten series and received twice for drama for The Pittsburgh Cycle . Each depicted the comic and tragic aspects of the African-American experience, set in different decade of the 20th century.
Daisy Wilson, an African American cleaning woman from North Carolina, in the hill district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, bore Frederick August Kittel, Junior, the fourth of six children, to Frederick August Kittel, Senior, a German immigrant baker. From North Carolina, maternal grandmother of Wilson earlier sought a better life and walked to Pennsylvania. After his fifth year, his mother raised the children alone in a two-room apartment above a grocery store at 1727 Bedford Avenue.
After death of Frederick August Kittel, Senior, in 1965, his son changed his name to August Wilson to honor his mother.
In 1968, Wilson co-founded the black horizon theater in the hill district of Pittsburgh alongside Rob Penny, his friend. People first performed his Recycling for audiences in small theaters and public housing community centers. Among these early efforts, he revised Jitney more than two decades later as part of his ten-cycle on 20th-century Pittsburgh.
Wilson married three times. His first marriage to Brenda Burton lasted from 1969 to 1972. She bore him Sakina Ansari, a daughter, in 1970.
Vernell Lillie founded of the Kuntu repertory theatre at the University of Pittsburgh in 1974 and, two years later, directed The Homecoming of Wilson in 1976.
Wilson also co-founded the workshop of Kuntu to bring African-Americans together and to assist them in publication and production. Both organizations still act.
Claude Purdy, friend and director, suggested to Wilson to move to Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1978 and helped him secure a job with educational scripts for the science museum. In 1980, he received a fellowship for the center in Minneapolis. Wilson long associated with the penumbra theatre company, which gave the premieres, of Saint Paul.
In 1981, he married to Judy Oliver, a social worker, and they divorced in 1990.
Wilson received many honorary degrees, including an honorary doctor of humanities from the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as a member of the board of trustees from 1992 until 1995.
Wilson got a best known Tony award and the New York circle of drama critics; he authored Ma Rainey's Black Bottom , and Joe Turner's Come and Gone .
In 1994, Wilson left Saint Paul and developed a relationship with Seattle repertory theatre. Ultimately, only Seattle repertory theater in the country produced all works in his ten-cycle and his one-man show How I Learned What I Learned .
Constanza Romero, his costume designer and third wife from 1994, bore Azula Carmen, his second daughter.
In 2005, August Wilson received the Anisfield-Wolf lifetime achievement award.
Wilson reported diagnosis with liver cancer in June 2005 with three to five months to live. He passed away at Swedish medical center in Seattle, and people interred his body at Greenwood cemetery, Pittsburgh on 8 October 2005.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 133 reviews
August 7, 2020
A few years I started reading August Wilson’s Century Cycle of plays. A week or so ago, I noticed a friend reading one of Wilson’s plays, which gave myself the impetus to complete them over the course of the next year. Wilson won the Pulitzer for Fences and the Piano Tuner, and all ten plays depict a decade of the African American experience in the 20th century. Seven Guitars take readers and play goers back to the late 1940s when Jackie Robinson had broken baseball’s color line, allowing African Americans to start making small inroads into society.
Act I starts in the backyard of an apartment building owned by Louise. Six friends have gathered to mourn the death of their dear friend Floyd Barton. Floyd had been an ambitious musician, having recorded one hit record and eyeing bigger and better things. He had made plans to go to Chicago with his girlfriend Vera and make it big. What Floyd did not realize although his friends Canewell and Red did is that in the 1940s, there were just as few if not less opportunities for a black man in Chicago than in Pittsburgh, where the drama takes place. The Chicago of the 1940s and 1950s was largely segregated; however, Wilson does not reveal this, and Floyd does not know it. Chicago represented a to him a mecca where he could marry his girl, flaunt fancy clothes, and make it big. He was robbed of his life just when he was about to achieve his long sought after dreams.
As the friends reminisce about Floyd and life in general, it was difficult to latch on to one character in particular. I’m sure this may have been different had I saw rather than read the play. Vera was played by Viola Davis, who later starred in the movie version of Fences. Vera, Louise, and Ruby all saw men promise them the world and then not make do on their words. Floyd especially. It was the reality of their being African American in a society that was not quite ready for integration, no matter that they had fought in World War II, no matter how talented they were. Floyd Barton was a talented guitarist yet he was no better than King Hedley peddling sandwiches on the street, a black man in a white’s world.
In a series that lasts an entire century, Wilson shows African Americans’ progress. Seven Guitars is right in the middle. Floyd shows that a black man is on the cusp of achieving the American Dream but not quite there yet, something that will be revisited in later plays. Hedley refuses treatment at a sanitarium because he is still leery of the white man, and all the men are relegated to petty pawning and some to thievery in order to make ends meet. The women have been given so many empty promises by men that as they approach middle age as in Louise’s case, they know how difficult it is to trust men. Yet, time marches on for all of them and for society as a whole. We know in hindsight that rock and roll was here to stay by the end of the 1950s, with many African American musicians at the forefront of the movement. Floyd Barton had appeared on the scene a decade too early.
Having now read half of the century cycle plays, I have come to appreciate the theatrical talents of August Wilson. I still have five plays to read and I would like to space them out to savor them for their insights into the African American experience. After his impassioned performance in Fences, Denzel Washington had plans to turn the century cycle into a movie series on HBO. I do hope these plans come to fruition because to fully appreciate August Wilson, one has to view the plays on stage or film in addition to reading them.
4+ 🎸 stars
Act I starts in the backyard of an apartment building owned by Louise. Six friends have gathered to mourn the death of their dear friend Floyd Barton. Floyd had been an ambitious musician, having recorded one hit record and eyeing bigger and better things. He had made plans to go to Chicago with his girlfriend Vera and make it big. What Floyd did not realize although his friends Canewell and Red did is that in the 1940s, there were just as few if not less opportunities for a black man in Chicago than in Pittsburgh, where the drama takes place. The Chicago of the 1940s and 1950s was largely segregated; however, Wilson does not reveal this, and Floyd does not know it. Chicago represented a to him a mecca where he could marry his girl, flaunt fancy clothes, and make it big. He was robbed of his life just when he was about to achieve his long sought after dreams.
As the friends reminisce about Floyd and life in general, it was difficult to latch on to one character in particular. I’m sure this may have been different had I saw rather than read the play. Vera was played by Viola Davis, who later starred in the movie version of Fences. Vera, Louise, and Ruby all saw men promise them the world and then not make do on their words. Floyd especially. It was the reality of their being African American in a society that was not quite ready for integration, no matter that they had fought in World War II, no matter how talented they were. Floyd Barton was a talented guitarist yet he was no better than King Hedley peddling sandwiches on the street, a black man in a white’s world.
In a series that lasts an entire century, Wilson shows African Americans’ progress. Seven Guitars is right in the middle. Floyd shows that a black man is on the cusp of achieving the American Dream but not quite there yet, something that will be revisited in later plays. Hedley refuses treatment at a sanitarium because he is still leery of the white man, and all the men are relegated to petty pawning and some to thievery in order to make ends meet. The women have been given so many empty promises by men that as they approach middle age as in Louise’s case, they know how difficult it is to trust men. Yet, time marches on for all of them and for society as a whole. We know in hindsight that rock and roll was here to stay by the end of the 1950s, with many African American musicians at the forefront of the movement. Floyd Barton had appeared on the scene a decade too early.
Having now read half of the century cycle plays, I have come to appreciate the theatrical talents of August Wilson. I still have five plays to read and I would like to space them out to savor them for their insights into the African American experience. After his impassioned performance in Fences, Denzel Washington had plans to turn the century cycle into a movie series on HBO. I do hope these plans come to fruition because to fully appreciate August Wilson, one has to view the plays on stage or film in addition to reading them.
4+ 🎸 stars
April 27, 2020
August Wilson is one of the finest playwrights of the 20th century, but this is not one of his finest plays. The usual elements are here: a setting superbly realized in place and time, a large cast of eloquent, mellifluous African American voices, the abiding presence of music, hints of dark magic and ghostly hauntings, and an overwhelming sense of a complex and dangerous cultural heritage, a heritage which may lead to wisdom but can also lead to despair, violence, and death. When Wilson combines these elements most artfully, they may be transmuted into a masterpiece like Fences. Here, however, the elements don’t coalesce, the transformation never happens.
The “seven guitars” of the title are the seven voices of the characters in the play, the six mourners who gather after the funeral to celebrate the life of blues singer Floyd “Schoolboy” Barton, snuffed out at the moment when he had begun to achieve success, and the voice the guitarist and singer, the “Schoolboy” himself. Like many expressionistic playwrights—O’Casey and O’Neill come to mind—Wilson is often deficient in structure and relies instead on the music of his character’s speech as a form of organization. This time, though, it doesn’t work. The language of the characters isn’t sufficiently individualized, except for that of the mad old prophet Hedley, who should act as an occasionally chilling symbolic voice, but overwhelms and unbalances the play.
I admit that I could be wrong. This is a play after all, and I believe that, given the proper attention to the actual blues music of the play, a director, sensitive to the rhythms of speech and blessed with a cast of superior actors with their own individualized voices, could make this play into an an extraordinarily powerful entertainment. I didn’t have the privilege of seeing it, though, I merely read it. And in my reading, Seven Guitars--unlike Fences, “The Piano Lesson,” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”—failed to come to life.
I’ll quote here one of my favorite passages . Floyd the blues singer, on the verge of stardom, expresses his frustration at the factors that hem him in, the forces that seem determined to keep him from going to Chicago and cutting another hit record:
I had seven ways to go. They cut that down to six. I say, “Let me try one of them six.” They cut it down to five. Every time I push . . . they pull. They cut it down to four. I say, “What’s the matter? Everything can’t go wrong all the time.” They cut it down to three. I say, “Three is better than two—I really don’t need but one.” They cut it down to two. See . . . I am going to Chicago. If I have to buy me a graveyard and kill everybody I see. I am going to Chicago. I don’t want to live my life without. Everybody I know live without. I don’t want to do that. I want to live my life with.
December 2, 2024
12/2/24: Just a note to say that I saw the Chicago CityLit Theater production of this play last night and it was very good. I forgot how angry and crazy the mystical/spiritual Hedley becomes, and how desperate Floyd gets about his need to get his "chance" for a piece of the (American (Dream) pie; for a woman, for musical success. Whew, some violence there. An angry, desperate play set in 1948, three years post war, with nothing changed for this neighborhood, poised to enter the whiet picket fence sixties. The blues! Music, some dancing, some breathlessly amazing dialogue, lots of laughs and hope to almost balance the pain.
"I've said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice"--B.B. King
(Come to Chicago! You can still see the blues every night here! And great theater!)
Original review, 4/20/24: Seven Guitars (1996) is the fifth play in August Wilson’s ten play study of black America in twentieth-century America, one play per decade, variously called The Pittsburgh Cycle, The Century Cycle, or the Decalogue. I’d seen some of the plays on stage or on screen and had read 2-3 of them, but am this year, 2024, reading each of them through in order of decade, not composition. I had never have seen this one, though the Court Theater in Hyde Park produced it in 2023, and of course the Goodman (the first theater to produce all of them, put it on stage.
I had never read nor seen a production of Seven Guitars, but yesterday saw my first Chicago Goodman Theater production of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, directed by the legendary Wilson icon Chuck Smith, the second play in the cycle, and finished reading Guitars on the train home, so you'll have to forgive me if my synopses seem to blend together. Of course there are deliberate themes and images across the cycle, so it’s not all me doing that blending.
As with the previous plays, we have crackling dialogue among friends, this one set in 1948, in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. We have music, sung and played; we have a character who seems to be in tune with the mystical and magical and spiritual. In this one it is Hedley, a mad--crazy, angry-- prophet who carries knives, even a machete, kills chickens including, once, in a emotional outburst, a rooster, and also a human and threatens to kill even more humans. He reminds me a bit of Herald from Joe Turner, who also is in a state of rage over his treatment by whites, and who also carries knives. It's as if Wilson is syaing, in every generation there is an assimilationist strain, a capitalist strain, a go-along to get along strain, and also a strain of rage about unequal treatment.
The play opens after the funeral of blues singer Floyd “Schoolboy” Barton, and the rest of the play is the tale of how we got to that place. Floyd had one hit record, though the (white) Chicago producers screwed him out of making any money on it. Nevertheless, he has come back to Pittsburgh to talk to Vera--whom he had left for another woman--into going back to Chicago with him. No one thinks this is a good idea, though Vera is despearte in her own way, so considers her options: Nuthin', or Floyd.
There are not actually “seven guitars” in this play, but there are seven characters, six mourners/friends and Barton, who is desperate to get to Chicago to play in clubs where Muddy Waters has played, in Chi-town, but his guitar is in hock; his drummer’s drums are there, too. They are all broke. Then he gets bad news about the guitar, and things spiral, leading to this lyrical speech:
I had seven ways to go. They cut that down to six. I say, “Let me try one of them six.” They cut it down to five. Every time I push . . . they pull. They cut it down to four. I say, “What’s the matter? Everything can’t go wrong all the time.” They cut it down to three. I say, “Three is better than two—I really don’t need but one.” They cut it down to two. See . . . I am going to Chicago. If I have to buy me a graveyard and kill everybody I see. I am going to Chicago. I don’t want to live my life without. Everybody I know live without. I don’t want to do that. I want to live my life with.
This is not among my very favorites in the decalogue, but it is nevertheless great theater from one of the best playwrights in American history, a blend of expressionism, poetry, laughter, and harsh realism. It certainly is one of the grimmest and most despairing and angriest in the sequence, [which I even better understand having just read Nickel Boys and seen the fine indie film based on the book, all based on thre much documented and shameful history of a boys "reformatory" in Florida]. Great and important theater as one contribution to one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of theater, the Pittsburgh Cycle.
"I've said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice"--B.B. King
(Come to Chicago! You can still see the blues every night here! And great theater!)
Original review, 4/20/24: Seven Guitars (1996) is the fifth play in August Wilson’s ten play study of black America in twentieth-century America, one play per decade, variously called The Pittsburgh Cycle, The Century Cycle, or the Decalogue. I’d seen some of the plays on stage or on screen and had read 2-3 of them, but am this year, 2024, reading each of them through in order of decade, not composition. I had never have seen this one, though the Court Theater in Hyde Park produced it in 2023, and of course the Goodman (the first theater to produce all of them, put it on stage.
I had never read nor seen a production of Seven Guitars, but yesterday saw my first Chicago Goodman Theater production of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, directed by the legendary Wilson icon Chuck Smith, the second play in the cycle, and finished reading Guitars on the train home, so you'll have to forgive me if my synopses seem to blend together. Of course there are deliberate themes and images across the cycle, so it’s not all me doing that blending.
As with the previous plays, we have crackling dialogue among friends, this one set in 1948, in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. We have music, sung and played; we have a character who seems to be in tune with the mystical and magical and spiritual. In this one it is Hedley, a mad--crazy, angry-- prophet who carries knives, even a machete, kills chickens including, once, in a emotional outburst, a rooster, and also a human and threatens to kill even more humans. He reminds me a bit of Herald from Joe Turner, who also is in a state of rage over his treatment by whites, and who also carries knives. It's as if Wilson is syaing, in every generation there is an assimilationist strain, a capitalist strain, a go-along to get along strain, and also a strain of rage about unequal treatment.
The play opens after the funeral of blues singer Floyd “Schoolboy” Barton, and the rest of the play is the tale of how we got to that place. Floyd had one hit record, though the (white) Chicago producers screwed him out of making any money on it. Nevertheless, he has come back to Pittsburgh to talk to Vera--whom he had left for another woman--into going back to Chicago with him. No one thinks this is a good idea, though Vera is despearte in her own way, so considers her options: Nuthin', or Floyd.
There are not actually “seven guitars” in this play, but there are seven characters, six mourners/friends and Barton, who is desperate to get to Chicago to play in clubs where Muddy Waters has played, in Chi-town, but his guitar is in hock; his drummer’s drums are there, too. They are all broke. Then he gets bad news about the guitar, and things spiral, leading to this lyrical speech:
I had seven ways to go. They cut that down to six. I say, “Let me try one of them six.” They cut it down to five. Every time I push . . . they pull. They cut it down to four. I say, “What’s the matter? Everything can’t go wrong all the time.” They cut it down to three. I say, “Three is better than two—I really don’t need but one.” They cut it down to two. See . . . I am going to Chicago. If I have to buy me a graveyard and kill everybody I see. I am going to Chicago. I don’t want to live my life without. Everybody I know live without. I don’t want to do that. I want to live my life with.
This is not among my very favorites in the decalogue, but it is nevertheless great theater from one of the best playwrights in American history, a blend of expressionism, poetry, laughter, and harsh realism. It certainly is one of the grimmest and most despairing and angriest in the sequence, [which I even better understand having just read Nickel Boys and seen the fine indie film based on the book, all based on thre much documented and shameful history of a boys "reformatory" in Florida]. Great and important theater as one contribution to one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of theater, the Pittsburgh Cycle.
February 16, 2021
This was like a breath of fresh backyard barbecue air after my recent somber slog through
The Piano Lesson
.
In this fifth play from his Century Cycle chronicling the African-American experience in every decade of the 20th century, August Wilson offers up an ambitious, lyrical, provocative, and heartbreaking reply to Langston Hughes' troubling question: What happens to a dream deferred?
The year is 1948 and the central protagonist is Floyd Barton, a Blues singer with a new hit song from which he doesn't actually earn any royalties, but nevertheless views as his potential ticket to future fame and success.
For those familiar with Ma Rainey's Black Bottom , imagine an equally ambitious but slightly less hot-headed Levee in the first few months of a solo career. As one of the other characters astutely describes him, Floyd is ”the kind of man can do the right thing for a little while. But then that little while run out.”
Floyd returns to his hometown of Pittsburgh to convince his ex-girlfriend Vera and two friends/fellow band members to return with him to Chicago so he can produce another hit record. The entire play takes place in the backyard of Vera's tenement apartment, mostly as flashbacks from the days leading up to the tragic death of one of the characters (not really a spoiler, that much is revealed from the very first page).
This is where Wilson truly shines, capturing the intimate rhythms and poetry of everyday African-American life as this small community of friends, housemates, lovers, etc. gathers to eat, sing, dance, flirt, argue, play cards, and listen to a Joe Louis boxing match on the radio. This play is full of juicy, quotable soliloquies as these characters strive to make sense of their lives, loves, dreams, parents, and overall place in the world.
Of course this is also America in the late 1940's, so there's an undercurrent of dread and heartache and pent-up rage as things like poverty, segregation, police brutality, incarceration, and economic exploitation slowly and menacingly encroach upon these characters' daily lives.
Wilson returns to his recurring theme of generational tension between a younger, more urban and assimilationist generation embracing technological "progress" and chasing the "American Dream," and an older, more rural generation grounded in religious faith and a stronger connection to their ancestral Past.
Unlike some of the earlier plays, these themes never feel didactic or heavy-handed. In the fresh Spring air of his outdoor setting, Wilson allows these thematic conversations to breathe and grow and play off one another in complex, even contradictory ways. Sometimes it even feels like he's actually reveling in the messiness of it all.
Wilson's greatness, for me at least, lies in his boundless empathy for his characters, however frail or flawed they might be.
By introducing his audience to such vibrant, complex characters that we quickly grow to care about, then exposing us to the countless ways, big and small, that systemic racism and white supremacy restricts and chips away at their dignity and dreams, Wilson takes us to a place of true tragedy, reminding us of the human toll these social forces always leave in their wake.
In this fifth play from his Century Cycle chronicling the African-American experience in every decade of the 20th century, August Wilson offers up an ambitious, lyrical, provocative, and heartbreaking reply to Langston Hughes' troubling question: What happens to a dream deferred?
The year is 1948 and the central protagonist is Floyd Barton, a Blues singer with a new hit song from which he doesn't actually earn any royalties, but nevertheless views as his potential ticket to future fame and success.
For those familiar with Ma Rainey's Black Bottom , imagine an equally ambitious but slightly less hot-headed Levee in the first few months of a solo career. As one of the other characters astutely describes him, Floyd is ”the kind of man can do the right thing for a little while. But then that little while run out.”
Floyd returns to his hometown of Pittsburgh to convince his ex-girlfriend Vera and two friends/fellow band members to return with him to Chicago so he can produce another hit record. The entire play takes place in the backyard of Vera's tenement apartment, mostly as flashbacks from the days leading up to the tragic death of one of the characters (not really a spoiler, that much is revealed from the very first page).
This is where Wilson truly shines, capturing the intimate rhythms and poetry of everyday African-American life as this small community of friends, housemates, lovers, etc. gathers to eat, sing, dance, flirt, argue, play cards, and listen to a Joe Louis boxing match on the radio. This play is full of juicy, quotable soliloquies as these characters strive to make sense of their lives, loves, dreams, parents, and overall place in the world.
Of course this is also America in the late 1940's, so there's an undercurrent of dread and heartache and pent-up rage as things like poverty, segregation, police brutality, incarceration, and economic exploitation slowly and menacingly encroach upon these characters' daily lives.
Wilson returns to his recurring theme of generational tension between a younger, more urban and assimilationist generation embracing technological "progress" and chasing the "American Dream," and an older, more rural generation grounded in religious faith and a stronger connection to their ancestral Past.
Unlike some of the earlier plays, these themes never feel didactic or heavy-handed. In the fresh Spring air of his outdoor setting, Wilson allows these thematic conversations to breathe and grow and play off one another in complex, even contradictory ways. Sometimes it even feels like he's actually reveling in the messiness of it all.
Wilson's greatness, for me at least, lies in his boundless empathy for his characters, however frail or flawed they might be.
By introducing his audience to such vibrant, complex characters that we quickly grow to care about, then exposing us to the countless ways, big and small, that systemic racism and white supremacy restricts and chips away at their dignity and dreams, Wilson takes us to a place of true tragedy, reminding us of the human toll these social forces always leave in their wake.
March 5, 2024
"Seven Guitars" opens after the funeral of Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton in the late 1940s. His friends gathered in Louise's backyard when they returned from the cemetery. Floyd was a blues musician who just had his first hit record. The rest of the play lets us know why things went downhill so quickly.
"Seven Guitars" features four men, all with some musical ability, and three women. The women have been disappointed in love. The black men can't achieve success in a white man's world. They can't find good jobs, and they get harassed by the police. All the men need money, including those that need to get their instruments out of the pawn shop so they can play at a dance. While all the characters have had hardships in their lives, they experience real joy when they are creating music. But they can also turn on each other when oppression creates anger.
This is an effective tragic play, and it would be an even more rewarding experience to see it in person. Hearing the blues, the broadcast of the Joe Louis-Billy Conn fight, and the sound of the rooster crowing a warning to the group would draw the theater patron in even more.
"Seven Guitars" features four men, all with some musical ability, and three women. The women have been disappointed in love. The black men can't achieve success in a white man's world. They can't find good jobs, and they get harassed by the police. All the men need money, including those that need to get their instruments out of the pawn shop so they can play at a dance. While all the characters have had hardships in their lives, they experience real joy when they are creating music. But they can also turn on each other when oppression creates anger.
This is an effective tragic play, and it would be an even more rewarding experience to see it in person. Hearing the blues, the broadcast of the Joe Louis-Billy Conn fight, and the sound of the rooster crowing a warning to the group would draw the theater patron in even more.
February 19, 2024
”If I could put the music down I would have been a preacher. Many a time I felt God was calling. But the devil was calling too, and it seem like he call louder. God speak in a whisper and the devil shout.”
Set in the yard of a Pittsburgh Hill District boarding house, this fifth play in August Wilson’s Century Cycle is good, but falls short of greatness. Wilson’s usual themes are present — dealing with a world where the deck is stacked against you and everyone who looks like you, how this impacts relationships, aspirations that fall short, and the consolations (or lack there of) of music and religion. Unlike manny of Wilson’s other plays, however, this one just doesn’t seem to fit together into a comprehensive whole. While several of the characters (Hedley, Floyd, Vera, Ruby) showed promise of interest, none of them grabbed my attention strongly enough to pull me deeply into this play.
August Wilson built his plays on his unique dialogue. More than any other factor, that was what made them work, what made them sing. The music of this Black American dialogue is present in Seven Guitars, but it is muddied (at least as read from the page). Different voices tend to run together and lack distinctness. Perhaps, were I to see it performed it would be different, but I found this a difficult play to follow as I read it.
Set in the yard of a Pittsburgh Hill District boarding house, this fifth play in August Wilson’s Century Cycle is good, but falls short of greatness. Wilson’s usual themes are present — dealing with a world where the deck is stacked against you and everyone who looks like you, how this impacts relationships, aspirations that fall short, and the consolations (or lack there of) of music and religion. Unlike manny of Wilson’s other plays, however, this one just doesn’t seem to fit together into a comprehensive whole. While several of the characters (Hedley, Floyd, Vera, Ruby) showed promise of interest, none of them grabbed my attention strongly enough to pull me deeply into this play.
August Wilson built his plays on his unique dialogue. More than any other factor, that was what made them work, what made them sing. The music of this Black American dialogue is present in Seven Guitars, but it is muddied (at least as read from the page). Different voices tend to run together and lack distinctness. Perhaps, were I to see it performed it would be different, but I found this a difficult play to follow as I read it.
February 6, 2017
I am going backwards in August Wilson's Century Cycle but hey, I'm at the mercy of my Library and I started with Fences. I like how Wilson writes dialogue. It all seems very authentic. He can literally write about NOTHING and still make it interesting and perhaps a bit allegorical. Such as, in Seven Guitars, a character speaks about how roosters differ from state to state in the South. I don't know how he did it but Wilson made it funny.
It's difficult for me to articulate what Seven Guitars is about. I guess, at its barest, it's about a musician, Floyd Barton, returning home after a stint in jail to do right by his mama by getting her a proper gravestone, get the woman he loves, Vera, to forgive him for abandoning her for another woman then leaving for Chicago, and to reclaim his glory.
The other characters are Canewell and Red Carter, who play the harmonica and drums, respectively, in Floyd's band. Vera's friend, Louise and Louise's fast niece, Ruby, live in her building. Then, there's Hedley, her building's eccentric.
I liked the way the characters interact with one another in Seven Guitars. Their relationships, triumphs and tribulations are established quickly and smoothly with little exposition. They share little in - jokes that never seem extraneous.
Seven Guitars was very biblical to me. The use of seven, which is a significant number in Catholicism, runs rampant her. Ironically, the title is misleading as only two guitars are in the play itself. Hedley was the devoted prophet waiting for a sign and took matters into this own hands. Floyd was the devoted, mistaken as a messiah, and suffered the same fatal fate.
There were a lot of elements going on in Seven Guitars and I agree with Tony Kushner's foreword: it was all about time. Not having enough, having it stop, and watching it die. As chock full of symbolism, I think I enjoyed Fences more.
It's difficult for me to articulate what Seven Guitars is about. I guess, at its barest, it's about a musician, Floyd Barton, returning home after a stint in jail to do right by his mama by getting her a proper gravestone, get the woman he loves, Vera, to forgive him for abandoning her for another woman then leaving for Chicago, and to reclaim his glory.
The other characters are Canewell and Red Carter, who play the harmonica and drums, respectively, in Floyd's band. Vera's friend, Louise and Louise's fast niece, Ruby, live in her building. Then, there's Hedley, her building's eccentric.
I liked the way the characters interact with one another in Seven Guitars. Their relationships, triumphs and tribulations are established quickly and smoothly with little exposition. They share little in - jokes that never seem extraneous.
Seven Guitars was very biblical to me. The use of seven, which is a significant number in Catholicism, runs rampant her. Ironically, the title is misleading as only two guitars are in the play itself. Hedley was the devoted prophet waiting for a sign and took matters into this own hands. Floyd was the devoted, mistaken as a messiah, and suffered the same fatal fate.
There were a lot of elements going on in Seven Guitars and I agree with Tony Kushner's foreword: it was all about time. Not having enough, having it stop, and watching it die. As chock full of symbolism, I think I enjoyed Fences more.
September 23, 2020
Seven Guitars always leaves me with the strangest internal conversation, even though I’ve read it several times and I know what is going to happen at each decision point, AND I know Seven Guitars, while considered by many as Wilson’s Greek tragedy play, is an important prequel, so everything that happens must happen. It is the “predetermination” that gets to me, that things are predetermined so wrongly. I ask myself during the reading, for example, why doesn’t Vera listen to Louise and ditch Floyd? Why didn’t Floyd listen to Canewell and insist on royalties for his first recording? Why doesn’t Hedley take his TB self to the sanatorium? Why doesn’t Hedley shut his trap about all the Ethiopia/Haiti stuff? Why does Floyd resort to crime? Doesn’t he know crime does not pay? Why is Ruby? Why IS Ruby? To be fair, these are all the types of questions I ask myself when watching Eastenders, but I watch it everyday anyway!
Before I get too far afield, please pay special attention to the dedication, to the Tony Kushner forward, and to the Note From the Playwright. All three are quite magical and add to the play’s context.
Also, upfront, the playlist for Seven Guitars is probably one of the fullest and most complete of them all. So much music is cited/referred to/alluded to in the play.
By way of introduction, Wilson says in an interview that the thought for the play began as a story about four men working in a turpentine factory in the South. All musicians, they had a desire to go to Chicago to make a record. Wilson admitted that he knew nothing about the making of turpentine. Then he says that three women showed up, all in his imagination, of course, and asked for space in the play. The setting for the play migrated from the turpentine factory, to Chicago, to his mother’s back yard in Pittsburgh when the women arrived. He also said in an interview that the seven guitars are the seven characters in the play.
A few things stand out for me in the play. There are so many lists of things. It almost reminds me of Walt Whitman.
Act 1 Scene 1 lists all the different types of beer.
Scene 2 has a list of ingredients for dinner.
Scene 3 lists different brands of cigarettes that people smoke.
Scene 4 lists the actual recipe for cooking greens.
Scene 5 lists the blow by blow account of the Joe Louis fight and the different types of roosters.
Act 2 Scene 3 lists Floyd’s seven ways to go.
There is ritual in list making which is perhaps why Whitman found it a useful tool. And list making speaks to the oral tradition of religion in an almost mystical way.
A few more things stand out. The funeral scenes at the beginning and end serve as bookends for the plot development in the middle, almost a series of flashbacks. Vera says twice about the angels in Scene 1 “They come down from the sky.” Only Vera, Canewell and Hedley saw the angels.
Floyd was a WWII veteran and claimed a knowledge of guns and weapons although most black WWII veterans didn’t see any combat action. Vera makes a reference to a dress having two different kinds of blue, perhaps a metaphor. Canewell would have been a preacher but the devil’s call was to loud (Canewell and Ruby show up in a later play, as does Ruby’s son and Red Carter’s son). The dance scene after the fight reminds me of the Juba in Joe Turner and the table prison song scene in The Piano Lesson. Hedley killing Floyd with a machete is certainly reminiscent of his ritual killing of chickens in the yard, but it also reminds one of Levee’s knife murder of Toledo and Herald Loomis’s self-mutilation with a knife.
I haven’t seen it mentioned in the body of literature, but August Wilson often makes a point to applaud literacy, reading and writing, and to decry, if not condemn, illiteracy. This may seem an almost obvious position for a playwright to take, and it may appear that literacy is an automatic “state” to assume in an industrialized democracy like the United States. But a quick look at the statistics tells a different story and highlights the importance Wilson places on literacy in character and plot development.
In Fences, for example, Troy cannot read or write. Could that be the real reason why he wasn’t able to transfer to white league professional baseball? We don’t know and Wilson doesn’t tell us. In Seven Guitars, Floyd is illiterate and it is the cause of many of his woes. He can’t get his daily compensation because he couldn’t read to know to keep a certain letter. He failed to negotiate a deal for royalties on his first hit because he didn’t understand the process or the business itself of recording. He is a veteran of WW2, but he didn’t acquire any transferable skills from his army hitch because he couldn’t read, he couldn’t acquire information from texts. His misfortunes, it may be argued, stem more from illiteracy than from poverty, or racial discrimination, or any other cause.
We get the impression from The Piano Lesson that Boy Willie was functionally illiterate. He could farm, but there was nothing he could do, by his own admission, in the city (where literacy skills are required). Boy Willie thought it absurd that Maretha could only play what was written on the paper. In Ma Rainey, Levee was illiterate, though he could read and write music. In the end, he kills the only band member who could read and write, Toledo, acting out a rage he couldn’t contain from failing to get a side deal on some music he had written.
I think August Wilson was an archivist par excellence. He gave a lot of credit to libraries, and specifically to public libraries, but his talent was in creating and storing records, records of human life in each 10 year period of the 20th century. Seven Guitars is full of lists of things pertinent to life in the 1940’s. In The Piano Lesson the piano is itself an archive, a storage of family events across the years. Ma Rainey introduces us to “the record” and the recording process, a store of information that is transportable and reproducible. On and on.
Notes on Seven Guitars 04.12.2020
Let’s start with a recognition of the play’s dedication, to Wilson’s wife, Constanza Romero, and the Note from the Playwright, a sweet inscription to Wilson’s mother, Daisy Wilson Kittel, that details both his attention to character development and his recognition of culture as a prime mover of history. He spells out the play’s name, Seven Guitars, as an analog and a surrogate for the content of his mother’s life.
Using Aristotle’s Poetics as a frame of reference, let’s first note the prologue/Greek chorus in Act 1. Scene 1. It takes us forward in time to the funeral of the main protagonist, Floyd Schoolboy Barton. So we know up front what is going to happen. Floyd dies. There are no surprises, we just have to wait and see how the plot develops and how events unravel leading Floyd to his end. Even so, strangely enough, as spectators, we have hope, hope for Floyd, hope for his future as a recording artist, hope for his relationship with Vera. As we read we sit on the edge of our seats. Silly us, because the playwright told us up front. Why is there suspense?
Aristotle’s perfect tragedy does not involve the spectacle of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity, nor does it involve a villainous man in a similar condition. It should be a man in between, a guy like Floyd Barton, perhaps. The change of fortune should be from good to bad and should come about not because of some vice, but because of an error in judgement of a similar frailty. Floyd, after several ups and downs, has just enjoyed a successful debut playing his hit song at the local dance club, and is on his way, Vera his true love on his arm, to Chicago to record an album. The success he has hoped and dreamed for is almost within his grasp.
Then by some quirk of fate, Canewell discovers the money Floyd stole and buried in the yard, later acknowledging the “ownership” to Floyd, but right in time for an intoxicated Hedley to show up and assume the buried money is the result of some alcohol-crazed dream he had of his father and Buddy Bolden. Whereupon Hedley retrieves the machete recently gifted to him by Joe Roberts, and uses the machete to whack Floyd in the neck, severing his windpipe.
Of course, a lot happens in the interim. There is the complication of Floyd’s release from incarceration without access to either finances nor the means to earn wealth from his music as his instrument as well as the drummer’s drum set are in hock at the local pawn ship and the term for retrieving them has expired. There is the disappointment Vera experienced when he abandoned her earlier for Pearl Brown that he must now overcome, despite negative reinforcements from the landlady, Louise. Things are not looking good for Floyd.
Then in a reversal of fortune, Floyd comes into a bit of cash (from illegal activity, nonetheless), buys a new electric guitar, a new dress for Vera, and makes his date at the dance club, all to a rousing success. Collapsed into the same event, there is recognition of Floyd’s musical talents. The final spectacle collapses pathos and catharsis, for Hedley and Canewell at least, with Floyd, unfortunately, on the losing end.
It is important to recall that Seven Guitars is a prequel of sorts, and many seemingly random threads will establish their significance in the second part, the penultimate play in the Cycle, King Hedley II. But we should also note the archived information Wilson preserves, the card games (bid whist and pinochle), the cigarettes smoked (Old Gold, Chesterfield, Pall Mall, Lucky Strike, Camel), the beer brands (Iron City, Duquesne, Black Label, Red Label, and Yellow Label) , the menu items for Vera’s dinner (Chicken, potatoes and green beans), the four types of roosters, Canewell’s recipe for cooking greens, the blow-by-blow account of the Joe Louis fight, and the mention of Toussaint L’Overture and Marcus Garvey, all preserved for posterity inside the play.
We cannot overlook the bits of magical realism in the initial and final scenes of the play. Canewell, Vera and Hedley all see the six angels who escort Floyd into heaven. I have no interpretation for why those three in particular see the vision, except that Vera had accepted Floyd’s marriage proposal, making her perhaps the character closest to Floyd, Canewell survives the prequel and shows up later with a new name, and Hedley “fathers” the next tragic figure, King Hedley II, in the only play in the Cycle named for a character.
Finally, favorite lines, both from Vera: “I done told you, my feet ain’t on backwards” and “It was two different shades of blue.”
Post group discussion: Seven in numerology. One source says seven means wholeness, completion and comprehensiveness. Another source goes into the symbolism of seven: seven is the number of the spiritual quest. Seven, a prime number, is popular in both religion, i.e., seven throughout Revelations, seven in the monotheistic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), seven in Freemasonry, mythology and Theosophy, seven in Greek and Roman mythology, and in culture, i.e., Seven Habits, Seven Secrets, Seven deadly sins, etc., etc., etc.
A short word about structure in the play. The first scene of Act 1 ends precisely with the same line as the 9th scene of Act 2, the finale of the play. So the two are bookends “housing” the whole play. Also interesting the way the scenes get shorter, more compact, and more condensed in Act 2, sort of drawing us, pulling us, dragging us through the action to the end, which we already know, while keeping us on the edge of our seats. It is amazing how the structure of the play is used to unwind and unravel the action, almost collapsing linear time.
Before I get too far afield, please pay special attention to the dedication, to the Tony Kushner forward, and to the Note From the Playwright. All three are quite magical and add to the play’s context.
Also, upfront, the playlist for Seven Guitars is probably one of the fullest and most complete of them all. So much music is cited/referred to/alluded to in the play.
By way of introduction, Wilson says in an interview that the thought for the play began as a story about four men working in a turpentine factory in the South. All musicians, they had a desire to go to Chicago to make a record. Wilson admitted that he knew nothing about the making of turpentine. Then he says that three women showed up, all in his imagination, of course, and asked for space in the play. The setting for the play migrated from the turpentine factory, to Chicago, to his mother’s back yard in Pittsburgh when the women arrived. He also said in an interview that the seven guitars are the seven characters in the play.
A few things stand out for me in the play. There are so many lists of things. It almost reminds me of Walt Whitman.
Act 1 Scene 1 lists all the different types of beer.
Scene 2 has a list of ingredients for dinner.
Scene 3 lists different brands of cigarettes that people smoke.
Scene 4 lists the actual recipe for cooking greens.
Scene 5 lists the blow by blow account of the Joe Louis fight and the different types of roosters.
Act 2 Scene 3 lists Floyd’s seven ways to go.
There is ritual in list making which is perhaps why Whitman found it a useful tool. And list making speaks to the oral tradition of religion in an almost mystical way.
A few more things stand out. The funeral scenes at the beginning and end serve as bookends for the plot development in the middle, almost a series of flashbacks. Vera says twice about the angels in Scene 1 “They come down from the sky.” Only Vera, Canewell and Hedley saw the angels.
Floyd was a WWII veteran and claimed a knowledge of guns and weapons although most black WWII veterans didn’t see any combat action. Vera makes a reference to a dress having two different kinds of blue, perhaps a metaphor. Canewell would have been a preacher but the devil’s call was to loud (Canewell and Ruby show up in a later play, as does Ruby’s son and Red Carter’s son). The dance scene after the fight reminds me of the Juba in Joe Turner and the table prison song scene in The Piano Lesson. Hedley killing Floyd with a machete is certainly reminiscent of his ritual killing of chickens in the yard, but it also reminds one of Levee’s knife murder of Toledo and Herald Loomis’s self-mutilation with a knife.
I haven’t seen it mentioned in the body of literature, but August Wilson often makes a point to applaud literacy, reading and writing, and to decry, if not condemn, illiteracy. This may seem an almost obvious position for a playwright to take, and it may appear that literacy is an automatic “state” to assume in an industrialized democracy like the United States. But a quick look at the statistics tells a different story and highlights the importance Wilson places on literacy in character and plot development.
In Fences, for example, Troy cannot read or write. Could that be the real reason why he wasn’t able to transfer to white league professional baseball? We don’t know and Wilson doesn’t tell us. In Seven Guitars, Floyd is illiterate and it is the cause of many of his woes. He can’t get his daily compensation because he couldn’t read to know to keep a certain letter. He failed to negotiate a deal for royalties on his first hit because he didn’t understand the process or the business itself of recording. He is a veteran of WW2, but he didn’t acquire any transferable skills from his army hitch because he couldn’t read, he couldn’t acquire information from texts. His misfortunes, it may be argued, stem more from illiteracy than from poverty, or racial discrimination, or any other cause.
We get the impression from The Piano Lesson that Boy Willie was functionally illiterate. He could farm, but there was nothing he could do, by his own admission, in the city (where literacy skills are required). Boy Willie thought it absurd that Maretha could only play what was written on the paper. In Ma Rainey, Levee was illiterate, though he could read and write music. In the end, he kills the only band member who could read and write, Toledo, acting out a rage he couldn’t contain from failing to get a side deal on some music he had written.
I think August Wilson was an archivist par excellence. He gave a lot of credit to libraries, and specifically to public libraries, but his talent was in creating and storing records, records of human life in each 10 year period of the 20th century. Seven Guitars is full of lists of things pertinent to life in the 1940’s. In The Piano Lesson the piano is itself an archive, a storage of family events across the years. Ma Rainey introduces us to “the record” and the recording process, a store of information that is transportable and reproducible. On and on.
Notes on Seven Guitars 04.12.2020
Let’s start with a recognition of the play’s dedication, to Wilson’s wife, Constanza Romero, and the Note from the Playwright, a sweet inscription to Wilson’s mother, Daisy Wilson Kittel, that details both his attention to character development and his recognition of culture as a prime mover of history. He spells out the play’s name, Seven Guitars, as an analog and a surrogate for the content of his mother’s life.
Using Aristotle’s Poetics as a frame of reference, let’s first note the prologue/Greek chorus in Act 1. Scene 1. It takes us forward in time to the funeral of the main protagonist, Floyd Schoolboy Barton. So we know up front what is going to happen. Floyd dies. There are no surprises, we just have to wait and see how the plot develops and how events unravel leading Floyd to his end. Even so, strangely enough, as spectators, we have hope, hope for Floyd, hope for his future as a recording artist, hope for his relationship with Vera. As we read we sit on the edge of our seats. Silly us, because the playwright told us up front. Why is there suspense?
Aristotle’s perfect tragedy does not involve the spectacle of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity, nor does it involve a villainous man in a similar condition. It should be a man in between, a guy like Floyd Barton, perhaps. The change of fortune should be from good to bad and should come about not because of some vice, but because of an error in judgement of a similar frailty. Floyd, after several ups and downs, has just enjoyed a successful debut playing his hit song at the local dance club, and is on his way, Vera his true love on his arm, to Chicago to record an album. The success he has hoped and dreamed for is almost within his grasp.
Then by some quirk of fate, Canewell discovers the money Floyd stole and buried in the yard, later acknowledging the “ownership” to Floyd, but right in time for an intoxicated Hedley to show up and assume the buried money is the result of some alcohol-crazed dream he had of his father and Buddy Bolden. Whereupon Hedley retrieves the machete recently gifted to him by Joe Roberts, and uses the machete to whack Floyd in the neck, severing his windpipe.
Of course, a lot happens in the interim. There is the complication of Floyd’s release from incarceration without access to either finances nor the means to earn wealth from his music as his instrument as well as the drummer’s drum set are in hock at the local pawn ship and the term for retrieving them has expired. There is the disappointment Vera experienced when he abandoned her earlier for Pearl Brown that he must now overcome, despite negative reinforcements from the landlady, Louise. Things are not looking good for Floyd.
Then in a reversal of fortune, Floyd comes into a bit of cash (from illegal activity, nonetheless), buys a new electric guitar, a new dress for Vera, and makes his date at the dance club, all to a rousing success. Collapsed into the same event, there is recognition of Floyd’s musical talents. The final spectacle collapses pathos and catharsis, for Hedley and Canewell at least, with Floyd, unfortunately, on the losing end.
It is important to recall that Seven Guitars is a prequel of sorts, and many seemingly random threads will establish their significance in the second part, the penultimate play in the Cycle, King Hedley II. But we should also note the archived information Wilson preserves, the card games (bid whist and pinochle), the cigarettes smoked (Old Gold, Chesterfield, Pall Mall, Lucky Strike, Camel), the beer brands (Iron City, Duquesne, Black Label, Red Label, and Yellow Label) , the menu items for Vera’s dinner (Chicken, potatoes and green beans), the four types of roosters, Canewell’s recipe for cooking greens, the blow-by-blow account of the Joe Louis fight, and the mention of Toussaint L’Overture and Marcus Garvey, all preserved for posterity inside the play.
We cannot overlook the bits of magical realism in the initial and final scenes of the play. Canewell, Vera and Hedley all see the six angels who escort Floyd into heaven. I have no interpretation for why those three in particular see the vision, except that Vera had accepted Floyd’s marriage proposal, making her perhaps the character closest to Floyd, Canewell survives the prequel and shows up later with a new name, and Hedley “fathers” the next tragic figure, King Hedley II, in the only play in the Cycle named for a character.
Finally, favorite lines, both from Vera: “I done told you, my feet ain’t on backwards” and “It was two different shades of blue.”
Post group discussion: Seven in numerology. One source says seven means wholeness, completion and comprehensiveness. Another source goes into the symbolism of seven: seven is the number of the spiritual quest. Seven, a prime number, is popular in both religion, i.e., seven throughout Revelations, seven in the monotheistic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), seven in Freemasonry, mythology and Theosophy, seven in Greek and Roman mythology, and in culture, i.e., Seven Habits, Seven Secrets, Seven deadly sins, etc., etc., etc.
A short word about structure in the play. The first scene of Act 1 ends precisely with the same line as the 9th scene of Act 2, the finale of the play. So the two are bookends “housing” the whole play. Also interesting the way the scenes get shorter, more compact, and more condensed in Act 2, sort of drawing us, pulling us, dragging us through the action to the end, which we already know, while keeping us on the edge of our seats. It is amazing how the structure of the play is used to unwind and unravel the action, almost collapsing linear time.
May 29, 2022
I love August Wilson he’s an all time great, but this play isn’t my favorite. It’s still very good but it doesn’t really ever hit its stride. The characters never fully captured me.
October 8, 2011
The fifth of ten plays in Wilson’s the Century Cycle (and the seventh in order of writing), Seven Guitars is the first that was somewhat disappointing to me. Set in 1948 in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Seven Guitars begins with neighbors returning from the funeral of Floyd “Schoolboy” Barton, a local blues singer.
The play quickly flashes back to the time immediately before Barton’s death and then moves forward to the scene we began at. The play features seven characters, friends, neighbors, or bandmates of Barton, whose record “That’s All Right” is getting local radio play and motivates him to plan for a return to Chicago and further recordings. He is, however, just days free of the workhouse and broke, his guitar in hock at the local pawnship and his bandmates still smarting from their first trip to Chicago. (Unsurprisingly, they got paid a session fee for the first recording and neither they nor Barton are benefiting from its regional hit status.) The household to which Barton has returned includes Vera, his former lover, Louise, who manages the rooming house, Hedley, who keeps chickens, sells sandwiches and is a little off, and later Louise’s niece Ruby. Canewell and Red Carter, Barton’s former bandmates come and go.
Barton wants Vera, Canewell, and Red Carter to return to Chicago with him. The first time he went he left Vera behind and went with another woman who, according to Barton, believed in him. The first time he went they barely got paid and Canewell and Red Carter left penniless and discouraged. His message to all is the same: this time it will be different. He has a hit record and the record company wants him to make more recordings. But there are complications securing the funding for the trip to Chicago and the reader knows from the first scene that something went way wrong in the process.
As always the dialogue is rich in humor, spirit dark and bright, and history. The characters debate the weight of the past, the grip of race, the efficacy of a gun or a knife in a fight, the best way to cook greens, and the call of alcohol, religion and sex. Pushed by a would be suitor, Louise dismisses his insistence that she needs a man, “I got me a thirty-two caliber pistol up there. That be all the man I need.” Discussing life, Red Carter says, “But [the devil] do give you a chance. God don’t give you no chances. The devil let you roll the dice.” Barton and Canewell are discussing Hedley’s reluctance to go to a sanitarium for his TB (now that the sanitarium is finally admitting blacks). Canewell thinks Hedley is foolish for not getting cured, “He can choose whether he want to live or die.” Barton counters, “Then let him choose! He say he don’t trust it. How you gonna trust it for him.”
For most of the two acts Seven Guitars is nearly all engrossing pleasure but in the final two scenes the drama gets a bit away from itself and what happens is unconvincing and distracts from the poetry that came before. Still, it contributes well to the overall cycle of the African-American experience in the 20th century, sustaining themes of struggle, triumphs and setbacks, and adding indelible stories to the larger drama. If a chain is as strong as its weakest link, Wilson has forged a pretty strong chain of dramas. Fences is next and I look forward to it.
The play quickly flashes back to the time immediately before Barton’s death and then moves forward to the scene we began at. The play features seven characters, friends, neighbors, or bandmates of Barton, whose record “That’s All Right” is getting local radio play and motivates him to plan for a return to Chicago and further recordings. He is, however, just days free of the workhouse and broke, his guitar in hock at the local pawnship and his bandmates still smarting from their first trip to Chicago. (Unsurprisingly, they got paid a session fee for the first recording and neither they nor Barton are benefiting from its regional hit status.) The household to which Barton has returned includes Vera, his former lover, Louise, who manages the rooming house, Hedley, who keeps chickens, sells sandwiches and is a little off, and later Louise’s niece Ruby. Canewell and Red Carter, Barton’s former bandmates come and go.
Barton wants Vera, Canewell, and Red Carter to return to Chicago with him. The first time he went he left Vera behind and went with another woman who, according to Barton, believed in him. The first time he went they barely got paid and Canewell and Red Carter left penniless and discouraged. His message to all is the same: this time it will be different. He has a hit record and the record company wants him to make more recordings. But there are complications securing the funding for the trip to Chicago and the reader knows from the first scene that something went way wrong in the process.
As always the dialogue is rich in humor, spirit dark and bright, and history. The characters debate the weight of the past, the grip of race, the efficacy of a gun or a knife in a fight, the best way to cook greens, and the call of alcohol, religion and sex. Pushed by a would be suitor, Louise dismisses his insistence that she needs a man, “I got me a thirty-two caliber pistol up there. That be all the man I need.” Discussing life, Red Carter says, “But [the devil] do give you a chance. God don’t give you no chances. The devil let you roll the dice.” Barton and Canewell are discussing Hedley’s reluctance to go to a sanitarium for his TB (now that the sanitarium is finally admitting blacks). Canewell thinks Hedley is foolish for not getting cured, “He can choose whether he want to live or die.” Barton counters, “Then let him choose! He say he don’t trust it. How you gonna trust it for him.”
For most of the two acts Seven Guitars is nearly all engrossing pleasure but in the final two scenes the drama gets a bit away from itself and what happens is unconvincing and distracts from the poetry that came before. Still, it contributes well to the overall cycle of the African-American experience in the 20th century, sustaining themes of struggle, triumphs and setbacks, and adding indelible stories to the larger drama. If a chain is as strong as its weakest link, Wilson has forged a pretty strong chain of dramas. Fences is next and I look forward to it.
February 23, 2024
The fifth play in Wilson's Century Cycle. This one is set in 1948. The Seven Guitars in the play are representative of the seven characters in the play, each one has their voice and tune to sing, with their chords set to the tunes of their lives, but in the context of the community that they live in. It is a rich play, with many powerful themes built into the story.
Wilson loves music and sees it as central to the lives in the black community. This play has many similarities to a play from earlier in the century cycle, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" which also involves at least some of the main characters being musicians, violence coming to the forefront, and a woman being a source of conflict between two or more men.
The main character in this play is Floyd Barton, a talented musician who recorded a hot song when he was in Chicago. Now that he is back in Pittsburgh, he has been harassed by the police, by pawnbrokers, and even his record manager. Floyd had taken Vera with him to Chicago as his girlfriend, but then made the mistake of abandoning her for another girl. Vera vows not to make the same mistake of putting her trust in Floyd again, even though he appears repentant. Vera is the most interesting character in the play for me. Wilson has succeeded in bringing out the complexity in her character. But there are several characters who are well drawn in this story. Canewell is Floyd's friend. He carries a secret torch for Vera, but defers because he knows Vera prefers Floyd. Floyd believes that if he can just get back to Chicago to make more music than everything will work out right in his life. Headley is an older man who may need to enter a sanitarium to be cured of his TB. He is reluctant to go because he thinks that this may be "the man's" way of keeping him down. The play is a tragedy but makes you think deeply about how good people can come to a tragic end. Of the five plays, I've read in this cycle, "Seven Guitars" ranks second I think, just ahead of "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom". 'Joe Turner's Come and Gone" is still my favorite. The next one up is "Fences" which I think I will enjoy because I really liked the movie version with Denzel Washington in it.
Wilson loves music and sees it as central to the lives in the black community. This play has many similarities to a play from earlier in the century cycle, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" which also involves at least some of the main characters being musicians, violence coming to the forefront, and a woman being a source of conflict between two or more men.
The main character in this play is Floyd Barton, a talented musician who recorded a hot song when he was in Chicago. Now that he is back in Pittsburgh, he has been harassed by the police, by pawnbrokers, and even his record manager. Floyd had taken Vera with him to Chicago as his girlfriend, but then made the mistake of abandoning her for another girl. Vera vows not to make the same mistake of putting her trust in Floyd again, even though he appears repentant. Vera is the most interesting character in the play for me. Wilson has succeeded in bringing out the complexity in her character. But there are several characters who are well drawn in this story. Canewell is Floyd's friend. He carries a secret torch for Vera, but defers because he knows Vera prefers Floyd. Floyd believes that if he can just get back to Chicago to make more music than everything will work out right in his life. Headley is an older man who may need to enter a sanitarium to be cured of his TB. He is reluctant to go because he thinks that this may be "the man's" way of keeping him down. The play is a tragedy but makes you think deeply about how good people can come to a tragic end. Of the five plays, I've read in this cycle, "Seven Guitars" ranks second I think, just ahead of "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom". 'Joe Turner's Come and Gone" is still my favorite. The next one up is "Fences" which I think I will enjoy because I really liked the movie version with Denzel Washington in it.
November 13, 2025
I always enjoy August Wilson plays. He’s from my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and we are very proud of him here. His plays always feel so familiar to me. Even though most take place way before my time, the feeling of the people never changes. The mood is quintessentially Pittsburgh. The Black community specifically. If you look towards the photography of historic local photographer Charles “Teenie” Harris in the museums or even the archives online, you will feel that you find the characters in an August Wilson play going about their lives in the good old days of Pittsburgh’s Hill District neighborhood. Away from the city’s well known rich Mellon’s, Frick’s and Carnegie’s, August Wilson champions the working man’s plight trying to make do in in the city. The Great Migration brought many people to the city up from the south looking for jobs in the coal mines and steel mills. An August Wilson play brings you into these stories. In a way I feel like I’m taking a peek into the city during the time of my grandparents who also were a part of the Great Migration. I love that August Wilson knew how to write in such a familiar way that though reading the play, you feel as if you are watching a play or even in the midst of the action and conversation with those in the story. Seven guitars is exactly like this. It’s a short read. I don’t want to give anything away, so I’ve danced around the content. However make no mistake this is another winner from The Century Cycle collection. Phenomenal. Standing ovation.
5 stars ⭐️ A definite must read.
5 stars ⭐️ A definite must read.
December 22, 2025
This one is quite literally middle of the road for me and my least favorite so far in August Wilson's Century Cycle. It's a 2.5 rounded up to a 3 for Goodreads.
In 1948, a group of seven characters (the representative seven guitars) live in postwar Pittsburgh. There are three single women, a sick old man, and an aspiring blues musician who has recently released from jail. Floyd Barton wants to right his wrongs, but in doing so, he meets a tragic end. In the years after World War II, it was seen as prosperous for America. Out of the ashes of war, it rose as a superpower. That prosperity did not extend to Black people, and much of this play is about the promise of America's Dream falling apart, or at least, never including Black people.
Where this play loses me is the fact that the story never takes shape, and none of the characters seem that different from each other. The climax at the end felt mediocre, and I never really grew to care about any of these characters. I hear that a few of them will return in a later play, so I hope I gain an appreciation for them by then.
In 1948, a group of seven characters (the representative seven guitars) live in postwar Pittsburgh. There are three single women, a sick old man, and an aspiring blues musician who has recently released from jail. Floyd Barton wants to right his wrongs, but in doing so, he meets a tragic end. In the years after World War II, it was seen as prosperous for America. Out of the ashes of war, it rose as a superpower. That prosperity did not extend to Black people, and much of this play is about the promise of America's Dream falling apart, or at least, never including Black people.
Where this play loses me is the fact that the story never takes shape, and none of the characters seem that different from each other. The climax at the end felt mediocre, and I never really grew to care about any of these characters. I hear that a few of them will return in a later play, so I hope I gain an appreciation for them by then.
February 2, 2024
My first August Wilson. Casually profound and sociological, with dialogue that reminds me of Toni Morrison’s: lithe, witty, Shakespearean.
February 23, 2009
I just don't care about August Wilson's writing. This read like Fences part II; I know that it's part of Wilson's loose series on the plight of the black man, but it's just not a theme that interests me, especially because it seems like the issue always boils down to "There's no money! The white man is bringing them down! And they're bringing themselves down!"
But this was more than just thematically related to Fences - it also had a crazy man singing all the time and lots of dialect and diatribes about how you just can't count on the white man. Whatever.
I just don't like to wonder while reading a play assigned for a class, "Why the fuck was this assigned?" And that's how I felt here. Wilson may have won a mountain of awards for his playwriting, but the experiences that he documents are neither relevant to my life nor interesting; I don't mean to bust out my White Woman's Indifference on this front but for once I'd like to meet a cast of real people rather than the same motley crew of African-Americans trying to survive in the big, bad world with a lot of world-weariness and a little bit of hope. I'm confident that there are better stories to be told, and less predictable ones, too - with Wilson, you always know that something dire and dramatic will happen at play's end, but that the rest of the people will shoulder it with resigned grace. Great. Now give me a story I can bite my teeth into rather than one I could skim all the way through and still get the gist of.
But this was more than just thematically related to Fences - it also had a crazy man singing all the time and lots of dialect and diatribes about how you just can't count on the white man. Whatever.
I just don't like to wonder while reading a play assigned for a class, "Why the fuck was this assigned?" And that's how I felt here. Wilson may have won a mountain of awards for his playwriting, but the experiences that he documents are neither relevant to my life nor interesting; I don't mean to bust out my White Woman's Indifference on this front but for once I'd like to meet a cast of real people rather than the same motley crew of African-Americans trying to survive in the big, bad world with a lot of world-weariness and a little bit of hope. I'm confident that there are better stories to be told, and less predictable ones, too - with Wilson, you always know that something dire and dramatic will happen at play's end, but that the rest of the people will shoulder it with resigned grace. Great. Now give me a story I can bite my teeth into rather than one I could skim all the way through and still get the gist of.
September 24, 2015
After seeing this play at Actor's Theatre, I had to read the script. August Wilson wrote a play that is pure poetry, pure blues. "I saw Buddy Bolden/ What he say? He say show me the money/Naw.Naw. He say give me the money. What he give you? He give me ashes." Like a good blues song this play captures the joys and pains of black people who have migrated to Pittsburgh in 1948. This is a play about second chances in life and in love; it's about black people's search for dignity and meaning in a society that marginalizes it. As Ralph Ellison wrote in his novel, Invisible Man, black people took all the pain and existential angst of the human condition plus racism and segregation and turned it into poetry. Wilson breathed life into all of his characters--characters that you will love and hate, and care for, but you will never forget them. When I am driving to work, I catch myself saying: "What Buddy Bolden say? He say show me the money. Naw.Naw. He say give me the money. What he give you? He give me nothin' but ashes." Read this play; see it performed and like voodoo it will haunt you and you will smile.
April 7, 2008
This Wilson play is not one of my favorites - but it investigates the relationship between a man, his relationship with a woman, and his attempt to reach his dream. Like Fences, the lead character is a Black man who has a dream, in this case, of making it big as a musician. As in Fences, the powers that be (implicity white power structures) ultimately decide whether or not the dream will be realized. Wilson of course emphasizes the role of the self in reaching one's dreams, but also shows the tension of constantly having to outsmart an opponent to even make it to the starting line to compete.
Of Wilson's plays, this has the least developed female characters.
Perhaps more interesting than the lead character is the role of King Hedley, whose story of his father the musician and his own determination to remember and procreate - a metaphor for legacy of memory as much as it is, in the more traditional sense of legacy, is compelling, revealing, and far more complex than it appears to be for the lead.
Of Wilson's plays, this has the least developed female characters.
Perhaps more interesting than the lead character is the role of King Hedley, whose story of his father the musician and his own determination to remember and procreate - a metaphor for legacy of memory as much as it is, in the more traditional sense of legacy, is compelling, revealing, and far more complex than it appears to be for the lead.
January 31, 2008
Like just about every other one of August Wilson's plays, Seven Guitars is a masterpiece. And this is one of the stronger plays in the series. Wilson was one of if not the finest American playwright ever. Hopefully I will eventually manage not only to read every one of his plays (which I've almost done already), but to see each one performed live on stage as well.
November 14, 2012
there were parts of this that i really liked, parts i didn't like at all and parts that were just weird.
December 3, 2014
A powerful play loaded with symbolism that is dying to be unpacked.
December 23, 2023
There's a reason they call the theater 'drama'. There's enough drama in this play to stun, astonish and amaze any audience.
I think this is the only play where Wilson sets most of the play as a flashback, so the first scene tells us that a character has died. Then we wait to find out how, and why.
It's a device I've seen others use. It's interesting to imagine the play without that first scene. I think the actors have to embrace it and set a level of poignancy that is manifested at the end, a return to the time of the first scene.
I would be very interested to see this on stage. Perhaps someday I will.
I think this is the only play where Wilson sets most of the play as a flashback, so the first scene tells us that a character has died. Then we wait to find out how, and why.
It's a device I've seen others use. It's interesting to imagine the play without that first scene. I think the actors have to embrace it and set a level of poignancy that is manifested at the end, a return to the time of the first scene.
I would be very interested to see this on stage. Perhaps someday I will.
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March 5, 2020Wilson strikes again; what a knockout. What I loved most about this play was how Wilson portrays anger, specifically black anger, both a historical kind and a progressive one. He intentionally crafts scenes that are uncomfortable to watch, perhaps, in order for the (white) audience to reconcile with why they feel uncomfortable, what conversations they aren't having or what pasts they aren't acknowledging.
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August 14, 2024interesting turn in these later works of the century cycle. definitely seems like the move to the seattle repertory theatre post–"the piano lesson" allowed wilson to build out the interconnected world of these plays more and take greater risks with winding, action-less narratives. would love to see this staged some day — the richness of the dialogues and characters begs to be taken off of the page.
March 12, 2021
A stronger ensemble piece from Wilson, Seven Guitars utilizes several recurring themes from Wilson's prior plays and presents a story, mostly told in flashback, about one man wanting to make it big, an eclectic group of friends, and the horrific death and circumstances that bring them all together.
November 13, 2018
A great play by a great playwright. August Wilson tells a play about 7 people as the mourn a friend who has been killed just when his musical career was getting its jump start. A very powerful and moving play.
April 10, 2021
"My mama ain't had two dimes to rub together. And ain't had nothing but one stick. She got to do without the fire. Some kind of warmth in her life. I don't want to live in a cold house. It a cold world, let me have a little shelter from it. That's all I want. Floyd Barton is gonna make his record. Floyd Barton is going to Chicago."
February 24, 2023
Read this and then went and watched it (shout out Actor's Shakespeare Project and Hibernian Hall in Boston). Loved it, have thoughts, need to mull though. August Wilson's character work and dialogue great as usual.
March 1, 2025
i like august wilson a lot but this particular play was not for me 🤷♀️
March 11, 2025
Moving and lyrical, just like me!
February 23, 2019
You write indecipherable nonsense August Wilson.
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