Character Analysis: Boy Willie

A.  Physical Traits
Gender, Age, Race/Ethnicity, Size, Appearance, Ways of moving or speaking? Male, 30 years old, African American, slender probably (he’s a farm worker), he “has an infectious grin and a boyishness… talkative and somewhat crude in speech and manner” (1-2).        

B.  Social Traits

Economic status, Occupation and hobbies, Influential childhood experiences, Education, Social relationships, Family relationships. He’s lower class, working on farms, “chopping down trees” (5). He doesn’t own his own land, which is why he wants to buy some of Sutter’s. His father was killed while stealing a piano, and he is like his father in the way that when he wants something, he goes after it. He believes now that the piano should be used to buy himself some land. I’m not sure of his education, but I think he had little. He doesn’t know anyone higher up except for maybe Sutter’s brother who is possibly going to sell him the land. He’s not close with any of his family because he doesn’t see them too often. He hangs out with Lymon, a friend, instead.

Family Tree

I definitely needed a family tree for this production because WOW! There are a lot of members in this family.

There are actually several mentions of more off-stage characters that probably deserve their own family tree. For instance, Lymon is Boy Willie's best friend. There are brief moments where his father is mentioned, but that's not too bad. But Sutter has his own little family: it was a bit confusing to figure out at first, but in the end it only consisted of a few generations of four people.

The Charles family is made up of six generations with multiple siblings, and if I didn't write them all down, I would've been totally lost. I also added a key to label who was deceased, maybe deceased, and who wasn't.

Skript Analysis

I.  WHERE ARE THEY?
            A. In what country, city, place, building, room, etc.? The Charles house in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “How he gonna find his way all the way up here to Pittsburgh?” (pg. 14)
            B. How do the characters describe the place they are in? In the “Setting” section, it says that the house or what we can see of it (the kitchen, parlor, and staircase to the upstairs) is “sparsely furnished, and although there is evidence of a woman’s touch, there is a lack of warmth and vigor.”
            C. Is there any special significance to the place they are in? There is an upright piano in the parlor that is the centerpiece of the play. Also, they are in the North of America, which is much different than the South in this time period. There are small mentions of this throughout the play.

Costume: Boy Willie (IRL)

So I pulled some actual pieces out of my university's costume collection to try to create my look for Boy Willie. It's pretty accurate if you don't look at sizes for the different articles of clothing. You got Boy Willie's had, his suspenders, his pants (these are corduroy), and his shoes.

I wish I could have found a better cotton shirt though. This one is not stark white. The sleeves are longer than I hoped. The neck line has some kind of buttons, whereas I wanted mine to have none. In fact, that shirt wasn't even pulled from the men's section. That's right, that's a woman's blouse. With it tucked nicely into the pants like that, however, it's easy to imagine Boy Willie In Real Life, which is fine by me. :)

Costume: Boy Willie and Lymon (sketch)

Boy Willie is one of the main characters in this play (as you will see later in my character analysis). So I needed him to stand out. I chose to put him in a cotton shirt that was entirely white to draw the eye. I also gave him suspenders that held his pants up really high, which fit right in with that time period. Most boys and men wore them, especially in the working class. Boy Willie enters the play in is work clothes, since he went straight from picking watermelons to driving to the house, which took two days (Mississippi to Pittsburgh), in a pickup truck with Lymon.

Boy Willie is described as such: “BOY WILLIE is thirty years old. He has an infectious grin and a boyishness that is apt for his name. He is brash and impulsive, talkative and somewhat crude in speech and manner.” So I wanted to let the outfit breathe. I thought overalls would be too constricting for Boy Willie, although that would give him a boyish touch, so maybe in the second act. However, I like this outfit because it lets Boy Willie move around quickly and with energy, because he does tend to move around a lot in the play, always pestering someone about something.

All about this blog / timeline

I'm in a theatre college course at the moment, and our final project requires us to put ourselves in the director's seat and pick a play to mock produce. I chose The Piano Lesson by August Wilson because I've read Fences by him and loved it. A little about the author: August Wilson wrote a play for every decade in the 1900's to illustrate black lives during each of those time periods. I want to read all of them one day, but for right now The Piano Lesson is getting my full attention.

What to expect: I will be uploading everything from costume designs (one of my first posts after this) to character analyses and stage design. I will get as close to a real production as possible and documenting it all on here, except I will not actually be putting on a performance. SORRY! I wish I was, but there are five of us in this class and we can't all put on a play at once. That would be MADNESS! Enjoy!

Brista