Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Written by	August Wilson
Date premiered	1984
Place premiered	Eugene O'Neill Theater Center Waterford, Connecticut
Original language	English
Series	The Pittsburgh Cycle
Subject	A blues group waits to get to work in the studio, and tempers flare.
Genre	Drama
Setting	Chicago, early 1927

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is a 1982 play – one of the ten-play Pittsburgh Cycle by August Wilson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright – that chronicles the twentieth century African American experience. The play is set in Chicago in the 1920s (the only play in the group not set in Pittsburgh), and deals with issues of race, art, religion and the historic exploitation of black recording artists by white producers.

The play's title refers to a song of the same title by Ma Rainey referring to the Black Bottom dance.

In a Chicago recording studio, Ma Rainey's band players Cutler, Toledo, Slow Drag, and Levee gather to record a new album of her songs. As they wait for her to arrive they tell stories, joke, philosophize, and argue. Tension is apparent between the young hot-headed trumpeter Levee, who dreams of having his own band, and veterans Cutler and Toledo.

By the time Ma Rainey arrives with entourage in tow, recording has fallen badly behind schedule, enraging white producers Sturdyvant and Irvin. Ma's insistence that her stuttering nephew Sylvester speak the title song's introduction wreaks further havoc. As the band waits for various technical problems to be solved, Levee and Cutler come to blows. Levee is then simultaneously fired by Ma and rejected by producer Sturdyvant and in rage fatally stabs Toledo, destroying any possibility of a future for himself.

The play was produced on Broadway on October 11, 1984, and starred Charles S. Dutton as Levee and Theresa Merritt as Ma. Direction was by Lloyd Richards, one of August Wilson's most frequent collaborators. It received the 1985 Tony Award nomination for Best Play; Dutton and Merrit were nominated for acting awards. The show ran for 276 performances.

It was first performed in the UK at the National Theatre in London in 1989 in a production by Howard Davies starring Clark Peters and Hugh Quarshie as Toledo and Levee. It was enormously well received.

A Broadway revival opened on February 6, 2003, at the Royale Theatre, featuring Charles S. Dutton as Levee and Whoopi Goldberg as Ma. Directed by Marion McClinton, the show ran for 68 performances.

...
Wikipedia