Haunted Histories: August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson and the Reckoning of Generational Trauma

This past weekend, Netflix debuted its adaptation of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, inviting a new audience to experience one of the most complex and haunting entries in Wilson’s celebrated ten-play cycle. Having seen the Broadway production at the Barrymore Theater in December 2022, I was struck by the ways this story—equal parts family drama and ghost story—unearths the lingering weight of America’s violent history while illuminating the resilience of Black life.

At its heart, The Piano Lesson is a tale of inheritance, memory, and reckoning. The ancestral piano, carved with the faces of enslaved family members, becomes both a literal and symbolic battleground for the Charles family. For Boy Willie, selling it means economic opportunity. For his sister Berniece, it is a sacred vessel of history, irreplaceable and immovable. What unfolds is an intimate yet cosmic clash between legacy and agency, the living and the dead.

Balancing Family and Ghosts

August Wilson affords his characters a rare dignity, presenting their flaws and humanity with unflinching respect. On stage, the tension between family drama and ghost story felt perfectly calibrated, particularly as the supernatural builds to a crescendo, collapsing the domestic and spiritual into one. But as The New York Times’ review noted, the Broadway production, under LaTanya Richardson Jackson’s direction, leaned heavily into horror, emphasizing the literal over the metaphorical. This critique resonates in both the stage and Netflix versions, where the ghost of Sutter—an over-fed 340-pound white slave owner—looms as a symbol of unresolved trauma.

The parallels between The Piano Lesson and Toni Morrison’s Beloved are unavoidable. Both works deploy magical realism to confront the disruption of Black families under slavery, though they diverge in their use of the supernatural. Morrison’s ghost, the slain daughter of a fugitive mother, compels empathy and moral ambiguity, creating a murky moral terrain that makes disentangling from the past almost impossible. As Morrison once said, “The trauma of slavery is not only in the beating and the butchery but also in the self-loathing it instills, the destruction it wreaks on a person’s sense of self and family.” Wilson’s ghost, in contrast, externalizes the weight of slavery as a physical and vengeful force, raising an essential question:

💭 Do supernatural forces in these works illuminate the realities of systemic violence, or risk obscuring them in abstraction?

Magical realism often makes themes of generational trauma more accessible—perhaps even entertaining—but at what cost? By translating systemic oppression into the spectral, do we run the risk of depoliticizing its roots in state and extrajudicial violence?

Stage and Screen: Berniece at the Center

On screen, Danielle Deadwyler’s Berniece is weary and unrelenting, a performance that burns with fury. Her voice, sharp and commanding, cuts through her brother’s plans and challenges his entitlement. While Deadwyler leans into the raw anger of the character, Danielle Brooks’ Broadway portrayal brought a more layered balance, grounding Berniece’s fury in moments of quiet grief and restraint. In Brooks’ hands, Berniece’s pain seemed closer to the surface, a force held in tension rather than unleashed.

Both interpretations highlight the power of Berniece as a character—a woman tasked with holding the weight of a family’s legacy while navigating her own unfulfilled dreams and sacrifices. Her resistance to selling the piano is not just a rejection of Boy Willie’s plans but a refusal to let history be erased in favor of fleeting opportunities.

John David Washington’s Boy Willie, reprising his Broadway role, exudes relentless energy and ambition, embodying the swagger and frustration of a man trying to wrest opportunity from the jaws of systemic oppression. Samuel L. Jackson’s Doaker anchors both the Broadway and Netflix versions with a quiet wisdom that feels deeply tied to Wilson’s ethos: the past is not something you escape but something you learn to live with.

Visual Language: A Gritty Noir

Visually, the Netflix adaptation captures the Depression-era setting with a dark, moody, and noir-like aesthetic. As my friend L. Michael Gipson observed, “The era is flawlessly rendered in its care for details. There’s a grit to the images and the lensing of a horror movie at times, with images askew, shot upwards, and at various unexpected angles utilized to capture moments.” This visual language works to externalize the themes of imbalance and haunting that run throughout Wilson’s text.

The choice to lean into noir heightens the ghost story elements, making the film as much about atmosphere as dialogue. Yet, as with the Broadway production, the focus on horror risks narrowing the expansive scope of Wilson’s work, which is as much about community and inheritance as it is about the supernatural.

The Legacy of Haunting

The ghosts in The Piano Lesson are not just spectral—they are political, familial, and deeply tied to the legacy of slavery. This raises another question: Are all audiences equally equipped to understand the ghost as more than a fantastical device? Wilson’s genius lies in his ability to embed systemic violence within the fabric of his characters’ lives, but directors and adaptors must tread carefully to ensure that the metaphor is not lost in translation.

As I reflect on Wilson’s work, I am reminded of Morrison’s profound observation: “What’s past is never just past—it always lingers in the present, reshaping our lives.” Wilson’s piano, like Morrison’s ghost, reminds us that the trauma of history cannot be erased; it must be confronted, wrestled with, and, ultimately, understood.

August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson demands that we confront the past with open eyes and hearts, reckoning with the ways history continues to shape the present. Whether on stage or screen, it reminds us that the ghosts of history cannot be ignored—they are with us always, demanding recognition, reckoning, and repair.