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About Seven Guitars
DECEMBER 20, 1999-- Set in 1948, August Wilson's Seven Guitars revolves around seven people in Pittsburgh's blues community. Jackson Smith says "it's very much about an individual's--and a group's--confrontation with history, post-World War II. The characters question the contradictions of fighting a war for a so-called free world. The play also deals with the beginning of the music industry, and how black products were used but black people were not compensated."
Weaponry and détente also emerge as issues, but in a very subtle, emblematic sense.
"There are some very funny speeches about which weapons they carry, which ones are ancient, which ones work," she says. "The play dwells a lot on male and female issues."
Besides Seven Guitars, only Joe Turner's Come and Gone, of all of Wilson's plays, has more than two women characters, and Jackson Smith says Seven Guitars offers "the strongest female characters. All have a strong sense of voice and participate in the story telling more than in his other plays.
Seven Guitars opens February 17 at Cleveland's Karamu Performing Arts Theatre.
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