If ever there was a testament to the power of the age-old art of storytelling, it is August Wilson’s solo autobiographical play, “How I Learned What I Learned.”
And if ever there was an actor born to play the role Wilson wrote for himself (and in 2003, initially appeared in at Seattle Rep), it is local star Steven Anthony Jones, former member of American Conservatory Theater’s now disbanded acting ensemble.
The almost-two-hour-long monologue, co-conceived by Todd Kreidler and directed by Tim Bond, former head of TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, now artistic director of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, is a triumph. It’s funny, rageful, never sentimental, and occasionally shocking (to an almost entirely non-Black audience) at TheatreWorks.
An assemblage of scenes from Wilson’s early life in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and later, as he launched into his writing career in poetry, the show is performed on a simple set—chair, table, lamppost stage right, backdrop that suggests walls of bricks—with assorted projections on the upstage wall.
“I am supposed to be white,” reads the sweatshirt that the actor initially wears, joking, “I got this on eBay from Clarence Thomas.”
Soon enough, Jones dons Wilson’s trademark newsboy cap and launches into a series of scenes in which he plays multiple roles, from his elementary school teacher (the screechy-voiced Sister Mary Eldephonse) to Cy Morocco, “the original homeless man,” each one specific and detailed.
In one of his earlier lessons learned, a mentor, giving him advice for living, told him, “When you go to jail…” When, not if. As a Black man in a white society, it’s always when.
He catalogues a variety of indignities, many when he was looking for work with only a high school diploma. There’s the toy store owner who hired him and on the first day warned him not to steal. (“Toys?!” says an incredulous Wilson.) Also, the woman who hired him to mow her lawn—until he turned up Black.
There may have been times he didn’t stand up for himself, but in the incidents recounted here he kept his dignity—and walked away. He apparently was fearless and confrontational from an early age.
Much of the memoir is both comical and rueful: His pursuit of the untrustworthy Snookie. His realization that to write poetry he needed first to learn how.
Much of it is about the lessons he learned from others, and how he learned them: about the “limitations of the instrument”; that “something is not always better than nothing,” as his mother taught him.
In a particularly luminous scene, he discovers the music of John Coltrane. (Sound and projection design, just the right amount of both, by Rasean Davonté Johnson weave seamlessly throughout the entire piece.)
Jones has said he’s moving away, a great loss to the Bay Area. Wilson, who won Tonys, Pulitzer Prizes and more, died too soon, in 2005 at age 60. Fittingly, under Bond’s direction, “How I Learned” ends with list projected on the wall of all of Wilson’s plays, from “Jitney” to “Radio Golf.” The list, following this deeply involving look inside the mind of one of the 20th century’s most brilliant playwrights, feels heartbreaking.
What more stories might he have told us?
TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s “How I Learned What I Learned” continues through Feb. 3 at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View. Tickets are $37 to $82 at (877) 662-8978 or theatreworks.org.