Like many of those involved in the making of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”, Viola Davis does not find it easy to sum up what the playwright August Wilson meant to her other than to answer, “Everything”.
Davis’ first stage role was in Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. She made her Broadway debut in his “Seven Guitars” and won a Tony for “King Hedley II”. After playing Rose in Wilson’s Fences on Broadway, she repeated the role in Denzel Washington’s 2016 film and won an Oscar.
Especially as an acting student, Davis saw a new light when she first met Wilson – a playwright who was among the greats. Arthur Miller. Eugene O’Neill. Shakespeare.
“You’re always trying to fit yourself into those roles, get someone to see you in those roles, and turn into a white woman in your brain,” Davis said. “With August, when he came with me, I didn’t have to do that. These roles are so much a part of my life. It won’t fit a square pin in a round hole. It’s something that speaks absolutely to me that I don’t have to fight to embody. It still takes a lot of work and craft, but I don’t feel like I need to change the canvas for who I am. He is our playwright. He belongs to us. “
George C. Wolfe’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” which began streaming on Netflix today, is the second film adaptation of Wilson’s plays in an ambitious project directed by Denzel Washington. After “Fences” and “Ma Rainey”, he wants to further adapt Wilson’s famous Century Cycle, a series of 10 games that spans every decade of the 20th century. (The set of 30 “The Piano Lesson” with Barry Jenkins as director and leading actor John David Washington and Samuel L. Jackson is on deck.)
“These films will reach a much wider audience. Many more people will know the name August Wilson and what his work is about, ”said Constanza Romero, Wilson’s widow and executor of his estate. “You are unfortunately speaking to the plight of African Americans today.”
“Ma Rainey’s black bottom” is unique in the century cycle. It is set in Chicago in 1927 and is the only one that takes place outside of Pittsburgh. All of Wilson’s songs hum with the sad beauty of the blues, but “Ma Rainey” is soaked. On a sweaty summer day, a band gathered in a white recording studio to record a new record with Ma Rainey (Davis), the groundbreaking “mother of the blues” and an apologetically liberated woman from the south. Rainey was openly bisexual and defiantly proud despite the Jim Crow world around her.
“I have a tendency in my life to be more shy, shy, and probably more anxious,” said Davis. “She is everything that I am not. She’s not someone who feels like she has to be hectic about her job. She knows she’s worth it. She knows exactly why she is worth it. She doesn’t apologize for her sexuality. As I put it on, I felt my hips sway more. I even felt like I was running better on the heels of Ma Rainey than Viola. “
Despite the title, Levee (Chadwick Boseman in his last performance) is the central, central character of the piece, an ambitious trumpeter with a more up-to-date take on Rainey’s music and big dreams of breaking out alone. As played by Boseman, he is a painfully tragic character who is haunted by the trauma of slavery as he searches for an unattainable future. In this way he represents the struggles of 100 years ago as much as they do today.
“One of the few things I ever said was, it’s Levee’s story. I think the finished product shows that, “said Romero.” I think August would have said that. “
A number of Wilson’s pieces were on the table, but Washington turned to “Ma Rainey” for its relatively condensed nature (it’s set in a handful of indoor spaces for the most part) and for the appeal of casting Davis and Boseman. Washington turned to its director, “The Iceman Cometh,” Broadway veteran George C. Wolfe for directing and long-time Wilson interpreter Ruben Santiago-Hudson to write the script. Maintaining the poetry and rhythm of Wilson’s dialogue was paramount.
“Langston Hughes wrote a book called ‘The Ways of White Folks’. August Wilson wrote 10 pieces on the path of blacks, “said Santiago-Hudson.” It was more our ways in our specific and authentic behavior in response to the wound the American had inflicted on us that makes his work so beautiful and brilliant. It’s always a festival. I don’t mean a party like a party where you fumble on the floor. I mean, look what I’ve been through and here I’m supposed to tell a story. “
However, as much as “Ma Rainey” was guided by awe of Wilson, who died in 2005, Wolfe didn’t want a sense of awe to overwhelm the storytelling. In order to deal with the language and characters, he required a two-week trial period.
“For lack of a better word, I wanted to erase August Wilson and leave only his characters. So talk Levee. Cutler and Slow Drag and Ma Rainey are talking, “said Wolfe.” When I work with actors I ask a lot of questions. Not because I am really looking for answers, but rather by speaking and questioning preconceived notions, I initiate a survey process that will lead to discoveries. “
What followed are two of the most famous performances of the year. Both Davis and Boseman are widely expected to win Oscar nominations. For Davis, Ma is not a character that she wants to let go of or stop admiring.
“My favorite line from her is: ‘Ma listens to her heart. Ma listens to the voice in her. It’s all that matters to Ma, ”said Davis. “I mean, it takes a lifetime for most people.”
The film is dedicated to Boseman, who died of colon cancer in August at the age of 43. Nobody in the movie, shot in Pittsburgh last year, knew of Boseman’s health problems. That only fueled the appreciation they share for what Davis describes as “transcendent”.
“He doesn’t play around in the role of the dike. He gives him his absolute 150%, ”said Romero. “I think August has something that makes the A-Game stand out in everyone.”
Romero likes to call the actors, directors, writers and filmmakers who keep returning to her husband’s work “Wilsonian Warriors”. She thought Boseman would stay with them. In 2013 he wrote movingly about meeting Wilson and being changed forever by his pieces – helping him “find my song,” wrote Boseman, quoting Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.
For the so-called Wilsonian Warriors who are still with us – an ever-increasing army – “Ma Rainey’s black ass” does not mean the end of a lifelong journey, but a continuation. Santiago-Hudson, who was friends with Wilson during his lifetime, starred or directed each of his plays. He’s not done yet.
“I want to keep my relationship with this work with my friend August,” he said, “until I die.”
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