Yale Repertory Theatre Presents August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”University Theatre222 York St.New HavenThrough Oct. 24, 2026 White male theatergoer strides up to a red RAV4 idling by the sidewalk next to Yale’s University Theatre. He makes a gesture for the person behind the wheel to roll down her window. WHITE MALE THEATERGOER: Are you my Uber? The woman scoffs. She cannot explain what just happened, just that her body feels wrong. JANDAY: I was sitting right next to you in the theater. I am NOT your Uber. Janday winds the window back up right in the white male theatergoer’s face. He backs up, shrugging his shoulders defensively. She waves at her friend, who is now approaching the car, to get in. JANDAY: You won’t believe what just happened. As she breaks the story down to her friend, they simultaneously laugh and shake their heads with a knowing disappointment. You just cannot make this up. I was, in fact, sitting right next to that man as my friend Rachel and I had just watched a play in which a character is unraveled by the machinations of white supremacy. Now, I was experiencing those same machinations in the real world; the same assumptions about where Black people belong. Playwright August Wilson’s work illustrates that it is in these seemingly small moments that racism’s insidious nature is revealed along with its profound impact.           In Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom — written in 1982, set in 1927 — Wilson uses a day in a Chicago recording studio to convey this reality. In the play, directed by Timothy Douglas, the studio is fraught with tension because the white male music executives are upset that Ma Rainey (Maiesha McQueen) is late to the session, and irreverent trumpeter Levee Green (Jimmie J.J. Jeter) is insisting the band must record his version of the titular track. He says he has executive Sturdyvant’s (Neal Lerner) blessing to write his own music and create his own band. “I know how to play real music. Not this jug band shit,” he declares. According to Levee, his bandmates are jealous. Meanwhile, Sturdyvant doesn’t even seem to respect the music, as he discusses his own departure into a “respectable” business, like textiles. And with the number of “boys” the white male executives throw at the nattily dressed band of Black men, it’s not too hard to imagine the fate that awaits Levee. In this very charged environment, every little moment becomes an opportunity for high drama. Levee’s shoes, for example, are a point of contention. What kind of man would spend a week’s worth of salary on shoes, his bandmates demand to know. Levee’s choice highlights his tendency as a ne’er-do-well who only looks after his own interests. For Levee, though, the shoes represent upward mobility. A man who argues with circular logic, he is hellbent on proving he deserves better than what Ma Rainey’s band is offering him. Even his costuming separates him from the pack; Levee’s in a mauve suit jacket while the rest of the band wears varying neutral-colored suits. Later, we learn he is profoundly traumatized. Pianist Toledo (Dion Graham) plays foil to Levee, with support from pragmatic trombonist Cutler (Terence Archie). Toledo is a learned man whose love of books and knowledge seem to fuel his equal parts love for and frustration with Black people. Toledo represents a fundamentally different response to racial oppression than Levee. Where Levee believes individual talent will allow him to transcend the racial hierarchy, Toledo recognizes that Black liberation is a collective endeavor. Toledo philosophizes every bit of discussion; bassist Slow Drag’s (Ray Anthony Thomas) request for Cutler’s reefer is an evocation of the African practice of calling on the ancestors; Levee’s dancing is the problem with colored folk who “always want to have a good time”; and the arrival of sandwiches turns into a discussion about leftovers and how the colored man is the leftover from history. He reminds the band that every living colored man has to do his part to solve race issues. “Now this nigga gonna be Booker T. Washington,” Levee declared as the audience laughed. Somehow, humor still broke through the gravity of the band’s interactions. The aforementioned white male theatergoer next to me noticeably guffawed when Rainey’s manager, Irvin (Jeff Parker), said, “You know they’re always late,” in response to Sturdyvant’s rant about Ma Rainey’s tardiness. To be fair, he also laughed when Toledo said, “If he’s an honest white man … which is asking for a whole heap of a lot…” All the conversation about a colored man’s undesirable place in the world is swept away when Ma Rainey finally and belligerently enters the scene. “Just tell the man who I am,” Rainey bellows, accompanied by a cop trying to arrest her. She frequently tells the white executives to get out of her face and that what they say doesn’t matter to her. “What you look like telling me how to sing my song?” She attempts to make the impossible possible and forces her stuttering nephew to record the introduction to “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” What a thrill to watch a queer Black female character call the shots like Ma Rainey — in 1927, no less. She reminds the record label that she has made bucket-loads of cash for them. It’s fascinating to watch how her celebrity enables her to push back more than her male bandmates. But there is always that understanding that she is only useful to white people as long as she makes them rich. Ma Rainey understands the transactional nature of her power. The white executives may resent her demands and refusal to be deferential, but they need her voice. And she knows it. McQueen so thoroughly embodied the diva Ma Rainey, it was easy to forget she was acting. Every shuffle around the stage and flick of her fan looked natural. When she grabbed money out of her bra, I smiled. McQueen’s commanding vocals also called for ovation. All the actors, down to the supporting roles, made their characters feel lived in. When Rainey orders her girlfriend Dussie May (Brittany Antoinette Davis) to sit her butt down, Dussie May emitted the exasperated sigh of a woman who has heard that command one too many times. The men in the band speak to one another like they really have been performing together for one too many years. They swap stories and steadily bicker over issues as small as spelling and as large as humanity. So, it’s not too shocking to see the coolheaded Cutler finally break when he feels Levee is insulting God. Cutler is sharing the story of a Black preacher who was forced to dance by white people to keep his life when Levee responds with vitriol. “…. why didn’t God strike some of them crackers down? … I’ll tell you the truth! … ‘Cause he a white man’s God…God take a nigger’s prayers and throw them in the garbage…In fact…God hate niggers! Hate them with all the fury in his heart … God can kiss my ass.” Through this confrontation, Wilson seems to be critiquing religious fervor in the Black community, in which disavowing God is sacrilege. He interrogates the uneasy relationship between faith and Black suffering. For Cutler, faith offers a means of endurance. For Levee, it represents another betrayal. During that scene, I heard some knowing Black “Mmms” in the audience. I knew that one would hit. Cutler tries to fight Levee, who threatens him with a knife and calls on God to save Cutler like he saved Levee’s mother. In an earlier scene, Levee recounted the story of his mother’s horrific gang rape at the hands of white men. His father went on to sell some of these same white men his property and then hunted them down. Levee’s father was hung and set on fire for avenging his wife. Levee tells that story to prove that, like his father, he is not afraid of white people, after Toledo called him out for how he kowtowed to Sturdyvant. The lighting of that scene was hauntingm as there was a spotlight cast on Levee that rendered him painfully exposed as he told his dark story; the rest of the stage was in shadow. Shadow was also used effectively in other scenes in which production kept white characters lurking in the background even when they weren’t performing. The omnipresence of white authority made for a very menacing atmosphere. Sturdyvant (Neal Lerner) and Levee (Jimmie J.J. Jeter). Credit: © Joan Marcus / Yale Repertory Theatre Later in the play, Sturdyvant finally tells Levee that the songs he told him to write weren’t quite the right fit. He physically forces Levee to take a smaller cut of cash for the songs. In a death blow, Sturdyvant stuffs the money in Levee’s pockets then forcefully pats them down like he’s a child. The gesture is unbearably intimate in its degradation. Levee seems to crumble into himself. It was about that point that I wrote in my notebook that I deeply identified with the feeling of existential crisis and dread that can accompany engagement with white people. No matter whether it’s “fiction” or real life and no matter the century, white people can just be … sigh. I felt tension in my body. I wondered if the audience at the 1984 world premiere of the Lloyd Richards-staged production felt the same level of disquiet. Oh, Levee is angry. The force of it nearly propels actor Jeter’s body from the stage. But he is trapped. Expressing his anger to the white man will only bring him to a deadly end. August Wilson’s genius lies in his ability to capture the complexities of race relations and the Black experience with extraordinary nuance. His work is as enduring as ever because the struggle he so masterfully dramatized is far from over. August Wilson’s daughter Sakina Ansari, who was in the audience for the return of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom to Yale Rep, shared that her father would always sign his autographs with the phrase “the struggle continues.” “I always was like, when is that not going to be relevant? When will the struggle not continue? But, again, the struggle continues,” she said. The play lingered long after Rachel and I left. We spent an hour in my car discussing it and the encounter that followed, which, naturally, led to us trading more horror stories. The irony wasn’t lost on either of us: We had left the theater, but we hadn’t escaped the play. Ma Rainey (Maiesha McQueen) performing. Credit: © Joan Marcus / Yale Repertory Theatre The post August Wilson’s World Is Still Our World appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less