August Wilson's THE PIANO LESSON Opens at The Detroit Repertory Theatre

The Detroit Repertory Theatre will continue its 69th Season and the production of the American Century Cycle with August Wilson's The Piano Lesson, winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize. The production opens on Friday, January 9, 2026 at 8pm, with a Champagne Afterglow, and runs through March 15, 2026, with four shows a week on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

August Wilson's The Piano Lesson is the fourth installment of the American Century Cycle and a haunting play about legacy. Berniece and her brother Boy Willie fight over the fate of the family piano; she treasures it as a precious connection to their ancestors, and he sees it as the means to a more prosperous future.

“The Piano Lesson is joyously an African-American play: it has its own spacious poetry, its own sharp angle on a nation's history, its own metaphorical idea of drama and its own palpable ghosts that roar right through the upstairs window of the household where the action unfolds,” Frank Rich wrote in his 1990 review for the New York Times. “Like other Wilson plays, The Piano Lesson seems to sing even when it is talking.”

Janai Lashon is making her professional directorial debut with this show and is supported by a team of stage managers and talented designers. Delanti Hall, Izaya Spencer, Jacquese Steele, Nathan Alford-Tate, and Sharmaine Jones are making their first appearances on the Rep's stage and Will Bryson, T. Pharaoh Muhammad, and Jocelyn Letts are returning to the mainstage.

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