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Gem of the Ocean

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I remember thinking that I was inspired and wanted to write a blues song listening to the characters speak so colorfully in August Wilson's play, Gem of the Ocean. Phylicia Rashad and the entire cast were mesmerizing in the Broadway version I was lucky enough to see. I believe GotO is even more cinematic than The Piano Lesson, a Wilson play made into a movie that worked well on the screen, in my opinion. The story line of GotO spans a few days and engages and explores a spectrum of social and moral issues, without answering them and leaving the audience to ponder those gray areas. Highly recommended.

GoO is August Wilson's first play in his ten-play epic cycle of African-American history. It is not so much literal history as metaphoric: the essential qualities of strength, endurance, and community are what hold the characters together. For someone not familiar with Wilson's work, the play may be curious, but for anyone knowledge about Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Two Trains Running, or King Hedley II, Gem of the Ocean is an important work.

Broadway theater playwright August Wilson presents Gem of the Ocean, the first play in a ten-play cycle about the African-American experience during the modern twentieth century. Set in 1904 Pittsburgh, Gem of the Ocean follows a long-lived, fierce-willed matriarch and the two men she welcomed into her Hill District home: Solly Two Kings, who was born into slavery and served the Union Army in the Civil War, and Citizen Barlow, a man from Alabama seeking a better life. A richly textured exploration of the challenges faced in adapting to a new environment, no matter how many hardships one faced in the past, Gem of the Ocean is highly recommended.

Great Condition, got here on time, in the condition stated. Thank you for being so honest and sending the book.

August Wilson's "Century Cycle" is a serial of 10 plays, each set in a different decade of the 20th century, each addressing the historical challenges African-Americans faced at that time, as well as speaking to the wider problems and issues that tie us together as humanity. The first play in the Cycle, _Gem of the Ocean_, is set in Pittsburgh in 1904. The primary players are Aunt Esther, a "soul-cleanser", Solly Two Kings, a former conductor on the underground railroad, and Citizen Barlow, a young man newly arrived up north from Alabama. As with many of Wilson's plays, the connection between past and present is of primary importance - in _Gem of the Ocean_, Barlow seeks to have his soul cleansed for a crime he has committed.

In "cleaning his soul," Esther takes Barlow (and the audience) on a spiritual journey aboard a slave ship, the "Gem of the Ocean," helping Barlow (and the audience) understand the journey that African-Americans have been on, and which we Americans (black and white) are still on. Rather than blame or preach about the evils of slavery and how it has affected African-Americans, Wilson instead asks us to pause, think and reflect on the injustices we have done and which have been done to us - and he asks us how we can make these transgressions right.

I have not yet had the opportunity to see the play performed, although I hope to soon; the play itself is an easy read (just under 90 pages), but a masterpiece writen by an author at the peak of his craft. Highly recommended.

I stubbled upon this title while reading Hill Harper's, The Conversation. He made a reference to the the Gem of the Ocean. I actually stopped reading his book, to find the Gem of the Ocean play. The play was excellent, I read it so fast I thought I'd missed something. I savoring it. Could you maybe send more black author's, Thank you. I forgot my tag.

I got it in record time; in fact, quick enough to use it in my Black History month class. Thank you

The first couple of paragraphs of this review have been used as introduction to other August Wilson Century Cycle plays as well.

Okay, blame it on the recently departed Studs Terkel and his damn interview books. I had just been reading his "The Spectator", a compilation of some of his interviews of various authors, actors and other celebrities from his long-running Chicago radio program when I came across an interview that he had with the playwright under review here, August Wilson. Of course, that interview dealt with things near and dear to their hearts on the cultural front and mine as well. Our mutual love of the blues, our concerns about the history and fate of black people and the other oppressed of capitalist society and our need to express ourselves politically in the best way we can. For Studs it was the incessant interviews, for me it is incessant political activity and for the late August Wilson it was his incessant devotion to his century cycle of ten plays that covered a range of black experiences over the 20th century.

Although "Gem Of The Ocean" was not August Wilson's first play written in what has become the century cycle it is first in time at the turn of the 20th century. To set the context it was time when black chattel slavery had been abolished legally but after the time, at least in the South (and de facto in the North), that Jim Crow ruled race relations in America. The great promise of the Civil War and the post-war Reconstruction period gave way to the doctrine, if one can call it that, of "separate but equal". The struggle to come to terms with that hard reality , and the realization that an additional struggle or two were going to be necessary in order to regain that promise, sets the tone for the play and for the cycle.

As for the actual dynamics of this play itself it takes place in 1904, in as is most usually the case in Wilson's work budding industrial Pittsburgh, a place that theoretically could provide hope for the black masses heading north from the dead-end of the agrarian South. That hard dirty wage slavery could provide some positive relief shows the precarious position of blacks at that time. Moreover, this is a mixed blessing as blacks could be just as easily used as `scabs', and then discarded, as an core component of the labor force.

The story hinges around the actions that occur at one of the mills when blacks go on strike themselves for better wages and working conditions. Enter, one Citizen freshly arrived from the South but also frustrated by his prospects. He commits crime and another takes the fall for it. Then, all hell breaks loose until the time of redemption.

The agent of redemption will be none other than Aunt Ester, a figure who hovers around other Wilson plays, Black Mary as her lady-in waiting and Solly Two Kings, a hardened veteran of the black struggle for equality and himself a slave before he became an agent on the Underground Railroad a job he never gave up even after the abolition of slavery. It is that premise-one that the fight for black equality is neither a given nor an easy task that, without giving the plot away, creates the dramatic tension here. Along the way we cross swords with the Booker T. Washington figure of Caesar as the black agent of the unseen (in the play) white power elite to provide the contrary notion that black self-help and black folk wisdom is passé and that one must accept that this is a dog-eat-dog world. As always Wilson provides powerful dialogue to move the action and, once again, I hear that little bluesy, gospelly music in the background that always pushes the rhythm of these works. Kudos, once again, Brother Wilson. The struggle continues.

The opening poetic elegy to the trauma and the triumphs of bondage and freedom that were the seeds of August Wilson's epic 20th Century play cycle are to be found with profound beauty in Gem of the Ocean.
In 1904, in the same Pittsburgh district that is home to all the works, the mighty, wise and supernatural Aunt Ester lives at 1839 Wylie (and address that matters in several other plays, as does Aunt Ester) with the help of Black Mary and Eli. She is a force of nature, a maternal figure who serves as the community arbitor and soother, protector and advocate. She is quite beyond reproach (despite what happens to her late in the play) and it is in her drawing/living room of 1839 Wylie that Gem of the Ocean takes place, and where she takes in Citizen Barlow, a newly arrived Southerner, and where she deals with Solly Two Kings, a local renaissance and sales man.
The struggle of a people symbolically freed but culturally separate are at the core of the play, and while some characters are grounded enough to acknowledge and try to move on from the past, some are tied tightly to it, while others are willing to step on it towards another means.
Gem of the Ocean was the second to last play written in the cycle and serves as the illuminating tale of the strong spiritual core all of his plays and many of his characters possess. Markedly it is one incredibly stirring and beautiful scene, in which Aunt Ester guides Citizen Barlow to The City of Bones on the ship Gem of the Ocean that both magnifies the unspeakable in Wilson's oeuvre and the magical in it's theatricality.
There are few more significant American theatre series than Wilson's cycle, and if possible, now that it is complete, I would strongly recommend reading them in order. They are beautiful and interesting visions of the Black American experience, and feature much wondrous theatrical magic.
Specifically the recent editions open with introductions that are equally appreciative and revealing from actors, writers, directors or critics who worked with and knew August Wilson.