Review: HOW I LEARNED WHAT I LEARNED at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley

TheatreWorks opens 2024 with a super trifecta winner with August Wilson’s deeply personal and revelatory How I Learned What I Learned: a brilliant, bravura performance by Bay Area legend Steven Anthony Jones, excellent direction by Wilson interpreter Tim Bond, and of course, the profoundly poetic and incisive words of Wilson that resonate just as clearly today as when written and performed by him in 2003. This may be the last opportunity to catch a master actor at his very finest as Jones is leaving the Bay Area, but not retiring. This is his and Bond’s third go round with this piece and the love and commitment is apparent in this stunning production.

Opening with “The House I Live In (That’s America to Me),” Jones channels Wilson as he tells stories of his ‘becoming’ at age 20 in the colorful black neighborhood of Pittsburgh’s The Hill. Jones commands your attention with both his gentle chiding anger, pride, and humor. Bond and Jones received assistance from Wilson’s widow Constanza Romero and you can sense the authenticity and heartfelt delivery of Wilson’s life lessons learned from a collection of colorful characters like: Cy Morocco, who can’t read but won’t let anyone know and attempts to play the saxophone when he absolutely can’t, Chawley Williams a poet and junkie, the cheating Snookie and Wilsons mother. Stories about his struggle to sustain jobs display his newfound sense of self-respect, honor, and dignity.

Life lessons relevant to both whites and blacks, like ‘something is not always better than nothing” are philosophical gems Wilson carefully reveals through his entertaining anecdotes. The revolutionary jazz of John Coltrane and Art Tatum becomes a shield against the degradations of racism and an almost religious experience. Told not to hold onto a ten-gallon bucket full of unrealized expectations as opposed to a little cup that can be filled, Wilson learns to demand respect to receive honor in this world. The production, while deservedly focused on Jone’s performance, is expertly enhanced by Nina Ball’s brick walled set, lighting design by Xavier Pierce and Jonah Bobilin, with sound and projections design by Rasean Davonté Johnson.

How I Learned what I Learned captures the essence of what it must be like to grow up black in America summed up elegantly when he says that “black and white Americans are victims of our history and that this victimization leaves us staring across a great divide of economics, privilege, and the unmitigated pursuit of happiness”. Now more than ever, Wilson’s clarion call speaks to us all.

How I Learned What I Learned continues through February 3rd. For more information, please visit Theatreworks.org or call the box office at (877)-662-8978.

Photo Credit: Jenny Graham

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