Shakespeare & Company presents the American classic at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre
Shakespeare & Company returns to August Wilson’s American Century Cycle with The Piano Lesson, July 25 through August 24 at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, presented in collaboration with Actors’ Shakespeare Project (ASP).
Set against the backdrop of 1936 Pittsburgh during the Great Depression, Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning The Piano Lesson is the fourth in Wilson’s American Century Cycle series of plays, and the second performed at Shakespeare & Company following our award-winning production of Fences in 2023.
Director Christopher V. Edwards gave his insight into the play: “This play isn’t just words on a page or actors on a stage — it’s history brought to life,” he said. “August Wilson had a gift – he could take the everyday lives of Black folks and transform them into poetry, music, and something majestic.”
Artistic Director Allyn Burrows added that collaborating with ASP has been integral to bringing the production from Boston to the Berkshires, and fostering Shakespeare & Company’s long-held artistic relationship with the company.
“Collaborating with Christopher Edwards and our friends at Actors’ Shakespeare Project on this production is a real pleasure,” he said. “It’s an honor to present this towering and rooted story crafted by these fine artists on our stages.”
Tickets range from $22 to $77, including student pricing, and $5 Card to Culture tickets are available for participants of EBT, Massachusetts Health Connector, or WIC programs. For more information, visit shakespeare.org, or call the Box Office at 413.637.3353.
About Shakespeare & Company
Shakespeare & Company was founded in 1978 by Tina Packer. Located in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, the Company offers performance, education, and actor-training opportunities year-round, attracting more than 40,000 patrons annually with a core of more than 150 artists.
Press photos are available here
The Summer Season of 2025 at Shakespeare & Company is most generously sponsored by
Scott and Roxanne Bok.
Cast, Director, and Playwright
August Wilson
(Playwright)
Wilson authored Gem of the Ocean, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars, Fences, Two Trains Running, Jitney, King Hedley II, and Radio Golf. These works explore the heritage and experience of African-Americans, decade by decade, for the twentieth century. His plays have had their professional stage debut in his one-man show, How I Learned What I Learned. Mr. Wilson’s works garnered many awards including Pulitzer Prizes for Fences (1987); and for The Piano Lesson (1990); a Tony Award for Fences; Great Britain’s Olivier Award for Jitney; as well as eight New York Drama Critics Awards for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson, Two Trains Running, Seven Guitars, Jitney, and Radio Golf. Additionally, the cast recording of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom received a 1985 Grammy Award, and Mr. Wilson received a 1995 Emmy Award nomination for his screenplay adaptation of The Piano Lesson. Mr. Wilson’s early works include the one-acts The Janitor, Recycle, The Coldest Day of the Year, Malcolm X, The Homecoming, and the musical satire Black Bard and the Sacred Hills. Mr. Wilson Received many fellowships and awards, including Rockefeller and Guggenheim Fellowships in Playwriting, the Whiting Writers Award, the 2003 Heinz Award, was awarded a 1999 National Humanities Medal by the President of the United States, and received numerous honorary degrees from colleges and universities, as well as the only high school diploma ever issued by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. He was an alumnus of New Dramatists, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a 1995 inductee into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and on October 16, 2005, Broadway renamed the theater located at 245 West 52nd Street – The August Wilson Theatre. Additionally, Mr. Wilson was posthumously inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2007. Mr. Wilson was born and raised in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and lived in Seattle, Washington at the time of death. He is immediately survived by his two daughters, Sakina Ansari and Azula Carmen Wilson, and his wife, costume designer Constanza Romero.
Christopher V. Edwards
(Director)
Edwards is excited to be back at Shakespeare & Company. He is the Artistic Director of Actors’ Shakespeare Project (ASP) in Boston. Recent directing credits include: How I Learned What I Learned at Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival; ART at Shakespeare & Company; Let the Right One In, The Bomb-itty of Errors, Pride & Prejudice, Equivocation, Much Ado About Nothing at ASP in Boston; How to Break at the National Theatre of Norway; Hamlet at Gloucester Stage in MA; Fences, A Raisin in the Sun, Othello at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company; Venus in Fur, Water by the Spoonful, As You Like It at Nevada Conservatory Theatre in Las Vegas; Othello, The Three Musketeers, Romeo and Juliet at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in NY. Chris has performed in London’s West End, Off-Broadway, in Regional Theatres and internationally. He is a Senior Lecturer at the BU School of Theatre and has been a distinguished artist and consultant with The Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, and a consultant with the Madison Park Development Corporation in Boston. He lives in Jamaica Plain with his wife and daughter, Jennifer and Anya.
Anthony T. Goss
(Lymon)
Pronouns he / him
Anthony T. Goss is an award-winning actor from Boston. He has appeared in various independent film, TV and theatre projects. Recent theatre credits include: The Piano Lesson (Actors Shakespeare Project); The Effect (The Gamm Theatre); Toni Stone (The Huntington Theatre); Topdog/Underdog (The Gamm Theatre); Feed The Beast (North Carolina Black Rep); and Cowboy Off Broadway. He is a current playwright in residence with the National Black Theatre’s (NBT) I Am Soul Residency in New York City. He is excited to be returning to the Piano Lesson and honored to be working with Shakespeare & Company this season.
Jade Guerra
(Berniece)
Jade is born and raised in Boston. Recent shows include Her Portmanteau (Central Square Theater and Front Porch Collective), Taming of the Shrew (Actor’s Shakespeare Project), Nerds of Color (virtual Central Square Theater), Miracle on 34th St (Greater Boston Theatre Co), King Lear (Actor’s Shakespeare Project), Well (Wellesley Rep), Macbeth (Actor’s Shakespeare Project), Calendar Girls (Greater Boston Stage), The Legend of Georgia Mcbride (Greater Boston Stage), Shakespeare in Love (Speakeasy Stage Co), Julius Ceasar (Actor’s Shakespeare Project). She is a proud company member of Actor’s Shakespeare Project. She is a graduate of Ithaca College Acting program. She is infinitely grateful to Gail Guerra who aides in making all of her goals and dreams possible.
Jonathan Kitt
(Doaker Charles)
Boston Theatre: The Piano Lesson (Actors Shakespeare Project); Toni Stone (Huntington Theatre); Holiday Feast (Front Porch Arts Collective). Off Broadway: Boy x Man (Negro Ensemble Company). Off-Off Broadway: Becoming Something: Canada Lee (The Kraine Theater); Blues for an Alabama Sky (NYU Gallatin School); The Mighty Gents, The Odd Couple (African American Showcase Theatre). Regional: Knives In Hens (The Vineyard Playhouse); North Folk, Ends (New Jersey Repertory Company); Servant of the People, Julius Caesar (Jomandi Productions). Film: Unexpected (Dark Arts Film, Forager Films). TV: Crisis (NBC); Chicago Fire (NBC). Education: MFA (The Theatre School at DePaul University). He is an Assistant Professor Scene Study and Acting Emerson College.
Brittani McBride
(Grace)
Off-Broadway: Mud; Or when things get messy and how we live with it (Connelly Theater | SheNYC). Regional: The Piano Lesson (Actors Shakespeare Project); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Gloucester Stage); Fabulation; Or the Re-Education of Undine (Lyric Stage). Other: Lia Del Mar (Columbia University); Bay Dreaming (SFBATCO). Education: BFA in Acting from Boston University. Special thanks to: The McBride Tribe for their unwavering support and love
Ariel Phillips
(Maretha)
Ariel Phillips Regional: The Piano Lesson (Actors’ Shakespeare Project). Film: “My Friend Marvi (Boston University); Lucid (Boston Arts Academy). Education: The Colored Museum (Boston Arts Academy); The Crucible (Boston Arts Academy); Death Of A Salesman (emShakes); Emerson College Theatre & Performance (BFA).
“ranney”
(Music Director / Wining Boy)
West End: The Bomb-itty of Errors (Ambassadors Theatre). Regional: The Islanders, Fences, Hymn, Art (Shakespeare & Company); How I Learned What I Learned, Sweat (Ensemble Theatre Company); The Amen Corner, Hamlet, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, All the Way, Fences (Cincinnati Shakespeare Company); Jitney, Radio Golf, Two Trains Running, The Piano Lesson, Gem of the Ocean, Crowns, The Bomb-itty of Errors (American Stage Theatre Company); Scarlet, The Piano Lesson (Portland Playhouse Theatre); Water By the Spoonful, Seven Guitars (Nevada Conservatory Theatre); Zora Neale Hurston, The Piano Lesson (Center Theatre Company), Topdog/Underdog, Race, The Boys Next Door (Jobsite Theater Company); The Piano Lesson (A Public Fit Theatre Cmpany) Solo: Cufflinks and Jolly Ranchers for Dummies (Edinburgh Festival Fringe); And the Horse You Rode In On (Projects Arts Center, Dublin); Glossolalia: “ranney” is Speaking in Tongues, Whatever (Peoples Improv Theatre); Incendiary, The Break of Dawn: Tracing the Origins of Speech, Pardon Me: I Promise to Do My Best; “ranney” in Surround Zound (Straz Center for the Performing Arts); The Chicken or the Egg (American Stage Theatre Company).
Daniel Rios Jr
(Avery)
Daniel Rios Jr is pleased to return to Shakespeare & Company. Regional credits include Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s Macbeth (Ross); Central Square Theater’s Young Nerds of Color (Dr. DC Lopez/Reinaldo Herrera); Ivoryton Playhouse’s The Great Gatsby (George B. Wilson); Umbrella Stage Company’s Fences (Lyons); and Shakespeare & Company’s Comedy of Errors (Segundo-The Second Merchant). Film/TV credits include Aftermath, American Sports Story, The Perfect Couple, FBI, and New Amsterdam. He earned his MFA from The University of Southern California’s School of Dramatic Arts.
Omar Robinson
(Boy Willie)
Regional: King Hedley II, Seven Guitars, Pride and Prejudice, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, The School for Scandal, The Comedy of Errors, Henry VIII, Pericles, Twelfth Night (Actors’ Shakespeare Project); Toni Stone, Common Ground Revisited, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Romeo and Juliet, Tartuffe (Huntington Theatre Company); Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, The Winter’s Tale (Hartford Stage); Radio Golf, black odyssey, The Hunchback of Seville (Trinity Repertory Company); Dorset Theatre Festival, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, SpeakEasy Stage Company, Lyric Stage Company, Central Square Theater, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. Film: The Finest Hours. Education: BA, Emerson College. Training: Shakespeare & Company’s Summer Shakespeare Intensive, 2016.
