Samuel L. Jackson Sets Broadway Return With ‘The Piano Lesson’ Revival
deadline.comSamuel L. Jackson will return to Broadway next season after a 10-year absence with a revival of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama The Piano Lesson, to be directed by LaTanya Richardson Jackson in her Broadway directorial debut.Richardson Jackson, a Tony-nominated actor for her performance in 2014’s A Raisin In The Sun, will be the first woman ever to direct an August Wilson play on Broadway.Co-starring John David Washington and Danielle Brooks, The Piano Lesson will begin performances on Monday, September 19, at the St.
James Theatre.“August Wilson dedicated his life and devoted his talent to dramatizing our stories and our experience,” said Richardson Jackson, who is married to Jackson and most recently starred as Calpurnia in the Broadway production of To Kill A Mockingbird. “In doing so, he forever changed what it means to be Black in America.
His plays built empathy, created community, and showed us the power of representation. The Piano Lesson is one of his most enduring, profound and consequential masterpieces, and I am reveling in this opportunity to present it to Broadway audiences for the first time since its premiere.”The Piano Lesson is the fourth play in Wilson’s American Century Cycle, and premiered at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1987 starring a then-39-year-old Jackson as Boy Willie, the role that will be played next season by Washington.
Jackson was an understudy in the role when the original Broadway production opened three years later. (In 2011, he starred in the Broadway production of The Mountaintop as Dr.
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