By SHARON EBERSON

Brothers Malcolm Washington and John David Washington were in the spotlight in Pittsburgh on Monday, as they asserted how meaningful it was from them to be in the childhood hometown of August Wilson, and in the presence of the local Wilsonian actors who had turned out for a preview of their new movie.

A packed Harris Theater had just given first-time director Malcolm and award-winning actor John David a standing ovation as credits rolled for Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, adapted for the screen by Malcolm Washington and Virgil Williams, based on Wilson’s scripts for the Pulitzer Prize-winning play.

The sons of producer Denzel Washington were promoting the latest movie produced by their father from Wilson’s American Century Cycle, following the Oscar-nominated Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

A TV movie of The Piano Lesson, with a script by Wilson and directed by Lloyd Richards, previously made it to the screen in 1995. It landed with Hallmark when Hollywood studios balked at the playwright’s insistence on a Black director.

The 2024 film follows the Tony-nominated Broadway revival of 2022, with John David Washington as Boy Willie, Samuel L. Jackson as Doaker, Ray Fisher as Lymon and Michael Potts as Wining Boy reprising their stage roles. The film also features the luminous Danielle Deadwyler as Berniece, Corey Hawkins as Avery and Skylar Aleece Smith as the youngster Maretha.

In the 1936-set story, Boy Willie has come from Mississippi to Pittsburgh, where he barges in on his sister, Berniece, their uncle and her daughter. He has come North to make enough money to buy the land he has worked his whole life — the white landowner has recently died under mysterious circumstances. Boy Willie has a truck full of watermelons to sell, but he also needs to sell the intricately carved family piano to purchase the land. His sister Berniece is having none of selling the family heirloom, which portends a ghostly presence in the house.

The Piano Lesson focuses on circumstances that shape family dynamics and siblings in conflict, not all like the brotherly love on display in Pittsburgh.

The Washington brothers appeared briefly before the Monday preview and stayed afterward for a Q&A with Pittsburgh Wilsonian actor Wali Jamal. The audience included representatives and invitees of the August Wilson House, which co-sponsored the Netflix screening, and local actors who, like Jamal, had appeared in productions of The Piano Lesson and other Wilson plays. 

Before they left, the Washington brothers invited all of their fellow actors to join in a group photo. 

John David Washington made a point of saying that he had recently come from a promotional appearance in the UK, and how proud he was to have introduced Wilson’s work – in particular, the Hill District – overseas.

“This is such an incredible room,” Malcolm Washington added. “John David and I have been talking about this, getting here to Pittsburgh. Working in the August Wilson legacy and lineage, it felt like a pilgrimage coming here and connecting with all of you. So to be in this room and feel the excitement, and knowing that half of you have done this before, we’re just so connected. I’m just so grateful.”

John David talked about what it was like being in the August Wilson House, the Hill District landmark and artistic hub that has been championed by Denzel Washington. The brothers had been conducting interviews there earlier in the day.

“I feel like I couldn’t talk when we were in the House,” he said. “I was getting so much energy from the history of those walls. Those walls can talk. And I’m like, ‘This is why we do it as an artist. This is why we do it.’ It was invigorating.”

Here are more highlights from the Q&A Monday.

QUESTION: Can you share how you first came to learn about August Wilson’s work, and why his work has had such a profound impact on you?

JOHN DAVID: I saw a stage production of Two Trains Running in Atlanta, and then I saw Fences on Broadway. So that changed everything for me. And then as I started to study acting, I picked up Seven Guitars, and then I knew that to be the actor, to be the artist I’m trying to be, I had to do one of his plays – it was Shakespeare and [Wilson] for me. And so when I got the opportunity to play Boy Willie, I knew what was going to be on the other side of it was going to change my life forever, hopefully for the better, because it is a big swing.

MALCOLM: I saw Two Trains as well. My mom actually did it in Atlanta, so that was the first August Wilson play I had seen. But as I’m sure you all understand, August is somebody who’s like an uncle. You haven’t met him per se … it’s just, he’s always been around, in a way. When I was in film school, we had a project where you get to direct a scene of a great work, and the seas parted, and August Wilson’s Fences was staring back at me. That was the first time I really got to get into the text and really interpret and understand why he was so revered. 

QUESTION: What were some of the challenges you faced in adapting a stage play to film? 

MALCOLM: It’s a big undertaking. You have the opportunity but responsibility to deal with a gigantic legacy, right? This is a work that so many people feel so strongly about, that people had personal experiences with for decades. [So] you want to serve the work, you want to serve the community it represents, and make them proud. You want them to see themselves in the work still, but you also have a responsibility to push it forward, to bring it to the next generation. Because for me, I love these works and I love August Wilson and I want August Wilson’s name to be on the lips of everybody and the children especially. [Applause.]

QUESTION: Speak to some of the significant changes made from the original play to suit the big screen and make it cinematic. 

MALCOLM: I think a play inherently is kind of an objective experience. The audience looks at the stage, and everything exists on one plane, and actors can move to the front or you can block, but as an audience member, you kind of decide where you want to look and who you want to look at. … Film is a totally different medium. We can create more of a subjective experience. We can get into the point of view of a character. We can get into the interior life of character. So one of the ways that we wanted to approach this film was to guide the audience through character, using points of view. So for example, there’s Doaker’s monologue, the story of the piano, an incredible monologue. In the film, that turns into a story about Boy Willie, about how Boy Willie lost his father and how that drives him for the whole movie. That unlocks his character in a way. … We also put Willie in the prologue, at the scene of the crime. He wears his father’s hat. He has this connection to him in a way that we can understand where he’s coming from now. … It’s things like this that we really attacked. We wanted to get into the interior lights of the character. 

QUESTION: It was so great to see the taking of the piano. It’s only spoken of in the stage play, but we get to see it, and we get to see what happens to the men and the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog …

MALCOLM: It’s  important to reframe the story in that way, to tell the story of Black American reclamation, to set it up as an American story on the 4th of July, red, white and blue, the white picnic that we start with. But then the underbelly, the truth of America, that’s from the point that we start our story. 

QUESTION: The Piano Lesson incorporates spiritual and supernatural elements which are significant in African-American folk board. How were these supernatural aspects handled in the film and what do they signify in the context of your characters journey? 

MALCOLM: So that was a key emphasis, right? August is concerned with West African spiritual practice, the Black Southern Christian tradition, and how we wrestle with these two seemingly contradictory belief systems as Black Americans. But they both still live in us. And I knew in tackling the end of the film that we were going to play with these ideas, that we were going to have Berniece in a white dress. We’re going to have the candle, the piano as an altar, have Avery blessing it. I didn’t know he was going to speak in tongues until he did it that day. And it was incredible. He opened a portal to something that night. …

That night when we filmed it, the incredible actor, Corey Hawkins, as Avery, we just started rolling the camera and he just went somewhere and conjured something that was real. It was real! That night out of nowhere, this thunder and lightning storm starts happening. Literally, when he’s responding to all this stuff, lightning is crackling on the stage, pop, pop, pop. It felt like the place was shaking and it was so tangible what was happening. And he was the first leg of that sequence that we shot, and that just set the tone and started speaking in tongues, and we just didn’t stop rolling the camera. We just followed him around the house. And so much of what of that take is, what you see in the film and what happened with John David and then what Danielle found at the piano, that was just present in the space. And it was the spirit of so many people before us that have done this play. Our own ancestors, speaking through them in that moment, was very powerful. 

JOHN DAVID: I really love the deep-rooted spirituality in Avery and his journey. There’s a moment where we were filming, it is almost like a confrontation where he puts his hand on my forehead, right before I go upstairs and get my butt whooped, prepping me for the prizefight. I just love those moments. 

QUESTION: The piano is adorned with intricate carvings that hold significant meaning for the characters. How do these carvings symbolize the family’s histories, struggles, and what role do they play in the larger narrative of the film? 

MALCOLM: So the piano’s an altar, right? It’s representative of a history that we have to confront in order for us to move on. In designing it. We actually took so much inspiration from the original piano. I was blessed to have access to the August Wilson Archives here in Pittsburgh – a shout out to all the great people at the University of Pittsburgh doing incredible work. They showed me the blueprint to the original piano. And I knew that this was going to be the basis of our design for the piano. But in keeping with our tradition of carrying on to the next generation and making everything real, we wanted to imbue the set with as much reality as we could. So the carvings on the piano are our ancestors, our great grandparents, our great great grandparents. Every image of an ancestor that we have, we put on the piano. 

QUESTION: What unique challenges did you face in transitioning from a live theater performance to a film setting for the same role? 

JOHN DAVID:  These characters are trying to find who they are, or they are scared of who they might become. I found Boy Willie in a spiritual warfare. He’s really dealing with what side of the line he’s on with his faith and belief, due to what he’s lost in his life, how he lost his father, being on a Parchman farm and not seeing his family for all those years. I think there’s a lot of that in it, and there’s his American right to purchase the land and cultivate it in generational wealth. I think Malcolm X once said, ‘White is a state of mind.’ August Wilson writes, ‘Ain’t no difference in me and the white man.’ So there’s a powerful charge to do this for his family. I believe that he might die if he doesn’t … so this is what he can leave. Maybe he’s going back and forth with his sister because he really wants forgiveness. He’s remorseful, on a ticking clock. So a lot of that was going into it. 

Now, I got to say those words on stage and live that, but in the film, I had different responsibilities. Now the words are cut, cool, but there’s still a backstory. I can use it in my behavior. I can use it in my physicality. I can use it in the way I listen. And given that we don’t have to do most of the work, the work that’s going to be done by our director and our DP opening up the play, the visuals of it now, you just embody it and trust that those words that August Wilson wrote, that you’ve been saying every night, eight shows or whatever, that it would be in there.

QUESTION: How did it work with you and the other actors, being that you are brothers?

JOHN DAVID: I didn’t really look at it as my brother. I’m a fan of this filmmaker that y’all saw. [Applause]. When he wanted to do this, I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, this is the one. This is it.’ So I could say I was there when y’all discovered him. And the bridge to Malcolm is not just what was displayed on the screen this evening, but was how he set the table for his actors, the environment of creativity and the safety to fail, the license to interpret August Wilson’s words, bring our life experience to it. I mean, it’s not always like that with directors, but he’s special like that. So it was a gift every day to be able to try something.

 And these phenomenal actors that we got to work with, I mean Michael Potts, he’s done every August Wilson play, Samuel Jackson, he was Boy Willie in 1987. He did this first. So we’re standing on the shoulders of giants, and even this visit today helps me. 

The Piano Lesson will be available in select theaters on November 8, 2027, and can be streamed on Netflix starting November 22.

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Tags: August Wilson House, Harris Theater, John David Washington, Malcolm Washington, Movie, Netflix., The Piano Lesson, Wali Jamal