How I Learned What I Learned – Location, Tickets, Reviews

Posted on November 25, 2013

From the late August Wilson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpieces Fences and The Piano Lesson (among others), comes a rarely performed solo show written just before Wilson’s death. In How I Learned What I Learned, now playing that Signature Theatre, Wilson recounts his early years in Pittsburgh, sketching the people and stories that helped shape him into one of the most important artistic voices in the 20th century, and perhaps the greatest dramatic chronicler of the African-American experience.

Wilson is portrayed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who acted in many world premieres of Wilson’s plays and has directed some of their keenest revivals in the past few years. Under the direction of Wilson’s frequent collaborator, Todd Kreidler, Santiago-Hudson is a force of nature – he is a masterful storyteller who seems possessed by Wilson’s ghost, with all the poetry, swagger, and hunger for justice that coursed through the veins of Wilson’s best writing. Santiago-Hudson plays Wilson like Coltrane played the saxophone, with equal parts intensity and grace. It’s a beautiful performance that you need to see.

Critics acknowledge that the show is small and sleight – a quiet reflection, and not a vast opera of despair as Wilson’s other plays tend to be. It’s a collection of anecdotes, some of which are more compelling than others (The New York Times observes that the show “hits its jaunty stride when Wilson moves beyond generalized ideas about the oppression of his people and digs into the specifics of his own life”).

However, at the performance we saw, Santiago-Hudson created a communal space with the audience, inviting them into every story, to the point where many in the crowd actually talked back to Mr. Wilson, laughed with him and clearly felt his struggle as their own. Hard to tell how many in the audience were deeply familiar with Wilson’s plays, but then, How I Learned What I Learned isn’t really a story about playwrighting – it’s a conversation about where we come from, who we are, and how we know what we know.

Recommended if…

You’re a fan of August Wilson;

You’ve never heard of August Wilson;

You like solo shows;

You love good old-fashioned storytelling (not the concept, but the art form); OR

You want to see a poignant introduction to (or reflection on) one of the greatest minds in theater history.

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