11 Mar 2009
“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” Is an excellent play by the one of the most prominent Broadway writers August Wilson, who also is the author of “Gem of the Ocean”, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone”, “The Piano Lesson”, “Seven Guitars”, “Fences”, “Two Trains Running”, “Jitney and King Hedley II”. Like most of Wilson’s plays “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” deals with the problem of relations between afro-Americans and the white world. This time the life of the show business world is under the prism of author’s attention.
The central characters of the play are a famous blues singer Ma Rainey and her band. The black singer is popular among her own people, but unknown to whites. She tries to record a new album. Ma’s manager and the operator of the studio are white and Ma Rainey, is happy to dominate them. She also dominates the four backup men- trombone, piano, trumpet, and bass–who accompany her; and a stuttering nephew, who is to spoke an introduction to the songs. Much is devoted to the dialogues of the four backup men as they desultorily rehearse the numbers that Ma Rainey is about to sing. The four have been brilliantly drawn by Wilson, each of them being totally unlike his colleagues and yet in close rapport with them.
One of the central characters is Levee, who literally embodies the aspirations and disappointments of black men during this era and, arguably, today. Wilson puts Levee against Rainey, the band members, and the whites, showing various lines of inter- and intra-racial conflict. He is ambitious, and desperate to create his own band. He has no luck in his life and owning nothing, but his trumpet, has really nothing to lose. Levee is opposed to Ma Rainey in her vision of music and her vision of life. He represents the new era in the music life. Thus the battle between the new and the old is not the central one the problem of racism and exploitation is shown from all its sides. Wilson dramatized this dilemma, when the character Levee stabs a fellow musician who unintentionally stepped on his shoe, instead of attacking the white man who had stolen his music. Levee can be considered as a character of a dual nature. From one side, he’s aggressive, impulsive, arrogant and proud of his talent and music. From another he’s aware of the straight rebellion against the rules and existing state of affairs. His rage outcomes in the useless and senseless deed. Levee, although no longer the young man he was, is still a man who has never grown up, who has never come to terms with the world as it is. The play is his journey.
Levee cannot be considered as a positive character, as well as a negative one. That’s would be more correct to call him a real-world character, brilliantly depicted by the author. August Wilson successfully attempted to describe a behavior of a typical black male in extreme circumstances. Author gives Levee a test and he fails it. In such a way Wilson predicts the rebellion against the existing rules and orders of 30s.
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