One hundred years of August

The Piano Lesson takes us into the life of a family whose history has climbed out of slavery to live in a Pittsburgh apartment with an heirloom that has altered and even ended lives since it was made. A wooden piano initially made for the family's plantation owner's wife holds generations of family history carved into it.
Finally it is the nineteen thirties and people can stop dying for this piano.

The play takes us into the life of Boy-Willy, a southern man looking to buy some land to start a farm of his own and his friend Lyman. The two farmers drive up to Pittsburgh to see about selling this piano for the money to have something their families have wanted for so long. A hundred acres of farmland all for themselves.
Boy Willy is not initailly welcome into his sister's house, especially when she finds out he wants to get rid of the piano that has claimed the lives of so many.
Its a long struggle between memories of generations past and the prospect of a new life. A conflict of prioities, bringing out painful pasts and new beginnings.
Hearts were broken, lives were ruined, rebuilt, ended. All to the tune of old ragtime blues played to the tune of the past fifty years.