August Wilson’s How I Learned What I Learned

It’s a great honor to return to the Bowmer stage with August Wilson’s sublime poetry and indomitable voice of resistance. I jump at any chance to live with the words and wisdom of August Wilson—I still remember standing out on the Bricks at OSF as he told me stories and shared his last four plays with me. The stories in How I Learned . . . are vibrant, humorous, infused with jazz poetry, and capture the voice and life force of August like a mesmerizing spell. What a thrill it’s been to collaborate with Constanza Romero and the rest of this stellar creative team in conceiving a sacred liminal space for veteran Wilson actor Steven Anthony Jones to conjure these potent memories.

In a nation still plagued by systemic racism and divided about the teaching and accountability of our racialized history, How I Learned What I Learned is a clarion call. August’s experiences and observations—that we, black and white (all Americans), “are victims of our history,” and that victimization leaves us “staring across a great divide of economics, privilege, and the unmitigated pursuit of happiness”—is urgent, uncannily resonant, and feels like it could have been written today. It has been inspirational to examine and celebrate the legacy of self-respect and self-actualization of the monumental black artist who was the greatest American playwright of the 20th century.

—Tim Bond