Draft chapters for my American Century Cycle study group workbook - Two Trains Running

Two Trains Running

Syllabus - Two Trains Running (1990)

Synopsis: Set in 1969, the play revolves around a restaurant in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, which has suffered a long economic decline. The restaurant owner, Memphis, worries what will happen when the city comes to claim the building through eminent domain. A young activist, Sterling, tries to organize protests and rallies that can help save the restaurant, but Memphis is not so supportive.

– Dear White People – Two Trains Running is Not About Race: http://phindie.com/11061-11061-dear-white-people-two-trains-running-is-not-about-race/

– August Wilson Life and Work Timeline: https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/theater-dance/2012/06/01/August-Wilson-s-Life-and-Work-A-timeline-1945-2005/stories/201206010268

– YouTube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0Lvs-e_eIXZOBWNf_EwGXjngVAQKrvbC

– Character development in Two Trains Running: https://www.cincyplay.com/blog-single-post/cinncinati-blog/2019/03/18/the-characters-of-august-wilsons-two-trains-running

Glossary of terms: https://twotrainsrunning.weebly.com/glossery-of-terms-and-references.html

Aunt Ester in Post Gazette: http://www.post-gazette.com/ae/theater-dance/2009/11/09/August-Wilson-s-mythic-character-Aunt-Ester-explored-in-theater-festival/stories/200911090252

Wilson timeline: http://www.post-gazette.com/ae/theater-dance/2012/06/01/August-Wilson-s-Life-and-Work-A-timeline-1945-2005/stories/201206010268

My starting place is the opening dedication of the play.

“This one’s for Judy.”

I take that to be a veiled (perhaps not-so-veiled reference) to Wilson’s former wife, Judy Oliver, with whom he spent his life during the Minneapolis/St. Paul period (1981 – 1990). It was a nine year period in which he completed Jitney and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and wrote Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Fences, The Piano Lesson, and Two Trains Running. In news accounts, Wilson blamed the failure of the marriage on his work, saying at the end he and his wife had only spent three months together in the previous five years. Let’s just say he went through a very creative period and produced some exceptional work during that nine-year span.

They divorced in 1990. Nine years is not an insignificant amount of time. Wilson wrote six plays, the first six plays of the American Century Cycle, during the nine-year period.

Was it a part of a formal (or informal) divorce settlement? Was it merely an acknowledgement that the years spent with his second wife contributed to his overall success in spite of the ultimate decision to end the marriage? We cannot know for certain.

Side bar. In a divorce proceeding that went back and forth over 18 months, Marvin Gaye was persuaded by his attorney to offer half of the percentage of royalties he would earn on his next album, which he aptly named, "Here, My Dear" since it was more or less a gift to his estranged wife. The divorce was finalized within weeks during which Gaye went to work on the album. The album upon release was considered a commercial failure, though in the years following Gaye's death it has been hailed as a success and one of Gaye's best albums. Gaye wrote most of the lyrics and performed all of the musical tracks as he sought cathartic and regenerative relief from the loss of his marriage. The album was re-released in 1994 on the tenth anniversary of Gaye's death, and a special two-CD version was re-released in 2008, digitally remastered with tracks of current performers added to the original tracks. It is now viewed as a landmark in Gaye's career. See the Wikipedia article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here,_My_Dear

* * * * *

The three plays which preceded Two Trains Running are representative of what I like to call the Bearden-Wilson Collaborative. All three plays are based on Bearden paintings and collages. The four plays which follow Two Trains Running all take on a darker color of Greek tragedy, but with a small notion of redemption towards the end of each one. Two Trains Running marks that turning point to tragedy.

As I was reading I was thinking to myself, "This Sterling is a mess. There's nothing sterling about him. Every time he speaks he rambles, on and on, like his brains are a box of loose marbles. And as he progresses through the play, his monologues get more and more rambling." But before we meet Sterling towards the end of Scene 1, there is Wolf, the numbers runner, Memphis, the diner owner who doesn't want numbers run out of his business, yet plays a number every day, there is Risa, a naive young woman given to self-mutilation, and there is Holloway, the one who may be considered the voice of reason, but who accepts entirely the status quo as long as he is able to consult with a 340-year old woman. Finally, Hambone, who lives in a world of his own. Today we might find a place for him on the autism spectrum. Into this world, Sterling is released from prison to try to make a way for himself.

This is total dysfunction. No, this is a joke Wilson has crafted and is trying to pass it off as human drama. And it almost works, no, it does work because we the readers and theater-goers are so accustomed to dysfunction in our daily lives. In fact, we have accepted this dysfunction as the new normal since the crazy 60's when the play was set. Yesterday, for example, I read that the stock market closed over 1200 points higher on the news that inflation was only 7.3%!

There are the five options for making life "better" that I listed in prior sessions: (1) the status quo (however that may be defined) in the midst of urban renewal upheaval; (2) Aunt Ester’s brand of local spiritualism; (3) Prophet Samuel’s brand of networked community (think Daddy Grace in Washington, DC, Father Divine in New York, and Elijah Muhammad in Chicago/Detroit, each with overlapping satellites in cities and communities across the country) promoting self-help (and self-enrichment to those fortunate to be in the leadership elite families) and a type of cultural/religious cohesiveness; (4) the cultural nationalism and political awareness offered by the slain Malcolm X, itself a dying movement, and finally, (5) the non-violence politics of the slain Rev. King, also in decline in the late 60’s. King is dead, Malcolm X is dead, Prophet Samuel is dead, Aunt Ester is on her death bed, and the status quo is all that's left, represented by Wolf, the numbers man, West the undertaker, and Memphis, the restaurant owner.

Unlike every other play in the Cycle, Two Trains running has two epigrams. Well, actually, three, since the play’s title is itself a sort of epigram. But we'll get back to that. The second epigram,

"If the train don't hurry

there's gonna be some walking done,"

is credited to "Traditional" and it is a traditional blues line. But specifically, it comes directly from the closing couplet of a blues song Sleepy John Estes sang, "Diving Duck Blues." The song is about a man who is bedeviled by his attraction to married women.

Similarly, the title of the play, Two Trains Running, comes from a blues song made popular by Muddy Waters, "Still a Fool." The train/railroad motif reappears, this time in the very beginning of the song. But again, the song's lyrics lament the singer having fallen in love with a married woman. Again this theme of adultery surfaces. "Still a Fool" closes with a repetition of the phrase, "She's all right with me," a foreshadowing of a song that repeats itself in a blues song performed by Floyd Barton throughout the next play in the series, Seven Guitars. In fact it was Barton's first hit song.

Sometimes blues are just music, just folklore. But often, blues are “double-voiced” and carry an encoded message. Two songs in one play about an adulterous attraction are a bit more than a coincidence, perhaps. Or perhaps it’s just two songs.

* * * * *

It’s been a busy week with people gearing up for Easter, Passover, and on-going Ramadhan. It was reflected in reduced attendance at our weekly Zoom meeting. It’s also the week before taxes are due. 100DaysofDante increased their videos from three days per week to every day to squeeze the final cantos of Paradiso in by Easter Sunday. It has my head spinning.

I’m watching live video coverage of busloads of migrants arriving from Texas. They are getting dropped off across the street from Union Station here in DC, and religious charity groups are helping them with onward travel. I can only imagine they are arriving tired, hungry, and confused. Now they are being “herded” into a Capitol Hill coffee shop. But coffee is not what they need. To put the best construction on things, perhaps it is possible that the infusion of immigrants is a solution to America’s declining birth rates and labor shortages.

But back to Two Trains Running.  Two Trains Running is a play about many subjects. It is about

the false promise of urban renewal.

the pipe dreams of cosmic, universal justice.

the implied failure in the late 60’s of both Kingian non-violence and a more radical black nationalism.

the short-comings of big city religious movements.

women and their role in the community.

the interactions of multiple ethnic groups in the big city.

not necessarily a play about race or systemic racial discrimination, as clarified in this article: http://phindie.com/11061-11061-dear-white-people-two-trains-running-is-not-about-race/ .

We had a spirited discussion about Wilson’s depiction of women in the plays so far. Risa ran the cafe, there is no doubt about that. And Memphis treated her badly, disrespectfully, and by all indications, he was equally disrespectful to his wife who ultimately left him. With his wife, it wasn’t about a color TV or a Cadillac. I think, and this may be a stretch, but perhaps, at his foundation, Memphis was a very selfish man, self-centered and motivated exclusively by his dreams, by his vision. No shared dreams, no shared vision in his space.

Memphis criticized Risa for giving to Prophet Samuel’s church.

He criticized Hambone for constantly going on and on about the ham he believed was his due for work performed for the German butcher, Lutz.

He repeatedly warned Sterling he was headed back to the penitentiary. He constantly criticized Risa’s food preparation.

Memphis was a very critical guy on top of his selfishness. Together the two character flaws almost constitute a repetitive theme.

Holloway is the oracle of the crew. He remembers everything. And he is a strong fan/proponent/supporter of Aunt Ester and the moderating role she plays in the community despite the many ideological conflicts and contradictions.

And the play introduces us to Aunt Ester, who by this time (1969) is 349 years old (OK, somebody do the math: 1969 - 349 = ? ). Another joke (or intentional deception, perhaps) since the first African slaves arrived with the Spanish along the Pee Dee River in South Carolina in 1526 and in St. Augustine with the Spanish in 1565. Angolan indentured servants arrived with the British in Jamestown in 1619 but they were not the first.

We have talked at length about Wolf (the predator) and West (the undertaker/entrepreneur) and I will refer you to my notes from earlier sessions for both.

And Sterling. Sterling is as fragmented in his psyche and personality as Hambone is in his obvious disabilities and his scarification that we only discover at the end of his life. As such, their attraction is almost natural, two extremely wounded souls. Risa has intentionally scarred her legs to ward off men’s sexual advances but her efforts fall short – men still find her extremely attractive. Risa evidences a certain naivete in other areas, for example in her denial that West would resell used caskets, simply because it is against the law, and maybe even in her blind support for Prophet Samuel. She has a bond with Hambone and tries to take care of him, feed him, cloth him, and defend him. Only later do we learn that they share a tendency to self-mutilate. And that same bond ties her to Sterling, whose final and ultimate act of self-mutilation is his appearance at the end of the play with a ham for Hambone, stolen from the local butcher shop, and for which he has had to break glass, bleeding from his face and hands. It is also an act for which he is sure to return to prison.

* * * * *

Two Trains Running is not my favorite play in the American Century Cycle. Yet it is the one I’ve seen the most times on the stage. We saw it just a couple of years ago at Arena Stage, but our first time seeing it was at an off-the-beaten-path rather bohemian stage in London called the Tricycle. It was billed as the “English Premiere,” a bit of a misnomer, though in 1996 it may have been the first of any August Wilson plays to be produced/performed in London. Long story short, in my effort to “escape” the Embassy microcosm, I hung out in my then-girlfriend’s very multi-cultured world which consisted of folks from the former Portuguese colonies, the Caribbean, and South Asia. It made life in London VERY interesting.

The play is set in an important time in American history, the late 60’s, a time I recall, though it’s time for which I don’t have memories of external events, just going to school, going to church, and beautiful childhood memories of life with my extended family, my tribe. Nothing that matches, except in retrospect, the characters and events of Two Trains Running. I mean, all that stuff was going on, even in Greensboro, but it was stuff for which I had no conscious awareness at the time. With that disclaimer, I’ll continue.

In Two Trains Running we have the first mention of the grand matriarch of the Cycle, Aunt Ester. That is the most important observation I can make on Two Trains Running and everything else I may say is really just a footnote.

In his foreword, Lawrence Fishburne says “Two Trains Running documents a turning point in the ideology of black people in America, when the promise of a new way of thinking (and living) arises.” Perhaps. But if so, it is a multidimensional turning point offering at least the following five choices: (1) the status quo (however that may be defined) in the midst of urban renewal upheaval; (2) Aunt Ester’s brand of local spiritualism; (3) Prophet Samuel’s brand of networked community (think Daddy Grace in Washington, DC, Father Divine in New York, and Elijah Muhammad in Chicago/Detroit, each with overlapping satellites in cities and communities across the country) promoting self-help (and self-enrichment to those fortunate to be in the leadership elite families) and a type of cultural/religious cohesiveness; (4) the cultural nationalism and political awareness offered by the slain Malcolm X, itself a dying movement, and finally, (5) the non-violence politics of the slain Rev. King, also in decline in the late 60’s.

Oh, and by the way, Holloway mentions remembering a time when Prophet Samuel was just Reverend Samuel, before he visited with Aunt Ester. Just like Reverend Avery in The Piano Lesson. So he establishes that tie. Later on, Holloway mentions remembering a time when Malcolm X’s group in Pittsburgh only had 12 members. When asked why he didn’t become #13, he responded that he always knew where to find Aunt Ester and hadn’t had any additional needs. Again, the Aunt Ester tie/choice/option.

To put a Dante spin on things, tiptoe-ing through this field of landmines, we are led by August Wilson the poet (portrayed by Holloway, the retired house painter) and August Wilson the pilgrim (portrayed by Sterling, recently released from prison). Rounding out the ensemble, we have Memphis the entrepreneur and Wolf the predator representing the status quo, and Risa representing the Prophet Samuel option. Unassigned is West the undertaker (though maybe he fits in the status quo), and Hambone, the oracle, who dies in the play.

It may be appropriate here to draw a comparison between the two funerals that frame the play, the exorbitant arrangements for Prophet Samuel vs. the meager setting for Hambone. Prophet Samuel, with diamond and gold rings on his fingers and rolled up 100 dollar bills in his hands, had people lined up around the block to view his body in its very opulent casket at West’s place. (Recall Berniece warning Boy Willie that “God’s gonna bless you and West is gonna dress you.). Hambone, at the same funeral parlor, but in a “welfare casket,” was visited by Lutz and a couple of folks from the diner. West mentions that Hambone’s body was covered with scars, which made me think of Risa’s self scarification. It also brought to mind lines from Dante’s Inferno (Canto #29):

As did each soul rake himself with the bite

of fingernails in the great maddening itch,

itch that will never find relief or rest,

and scraped the nails down the long stretch of scab

like a knife slicing scales from off a pike

or other fish whose scales are bigger yet. (79-84)

One may conclude that while Prophet Samuel represented the aggregate wealth and power of the black community, Hambone represented the eternal quest for justice. Both die, one in classic, opulent style at the height of his power and fame, the other as a pauper in his sleep.

It turned out that the Malcolm X rally was a bit of a non-event, and as Memphis reminds us, “Dead men don’t have birthdays.” Speaking of death, Two Trains Running also has the only mention, in all of Wilson’s plays, of a person dying of a drug overdose.

An old friend from a former life used to say, “when you have too many foci, you lose focus.” I think that may be where we find ourselves in Two Trains Running (would that there were “just” two trains) and where black people found themselves in the late 60’s as a microcosm of where all Americans found themselves during the same, overlapping and intersecting period of social and political turbulence.

Wilson writer Riley Temple says the play is “short on plot, yet long on ideas,” a very precise way to say the play is all over the place. For a detailed synopsis, I refer you to the Huntington guide here: https://www.huntingtontheatre.org/august-wilson-monologue-competition/awmc-plays/two-trains-running/#Synopsis. I hope to distill a briefer synopsis by Sunday’s meeting.

* * * * *

My brain is all entangled in this thinking about Wilson’s second marriage and his half-hearted dedication to his second wife , Judy Oliver, in this play. The effusive and loving intro/dedication to the third wife coming up next in Seven Guitars does not help.

I do want to say a word or two about the Hambone character and his representation of some eternal, aggregate quest for justice. That justice is not, nor will it ever be forthcoming in my estimation. That Sterling arrives late with the ham in bloodied arms to place in Hambone’s casket to me is just silliness – it likely gets Sterling in trouble and does nothing beyond the symbolic for Hambone or for his friends at the diner. In fact, they’d probably be better off cooking the ham and serving it at a dinner in Hambone’s honor.

It raises a more general question (and answer). Can the descendants of African slaves be somehow “repaid” for the crime against their ancestors? Are there suitable reparations? The economist in me says there isn’t, that slavery represents a sunk cost that cannot be retrieved/reimbursed, and that people are better off just going forward with their lives. Reparations became an election year discussion in 2020. Pity the fools who fell for it and allowed that discussion to influence their vote, one way or the other, to be clear.

Finally, I never noticed until this session the four year gap between Two Trains Running and Seven Guitars. But I think it is significant. Two different wives bookend the period. (I continue with my misgivings about the way the second marriage ended. “Ray, you just need to grow up!”). It’s my personal opinion that the final four plays take on a tragic nature, a somberness that was not evident in the first six plays. Greek tragedy at its finest.

Going back to the Dante theme, we are more than halfway through a journey in this unordered American Century Cycle. But there is order. We see August Wilson the pilgrim as he winds his way on this journey. We see August Wilson the poet as he reports what he sees through the coded language of the blues. We see Wilson as the guide, Dante’s Virgil, steering us the readers through the fires of Hell, through Purgatory, and ultimately, to Paradise.

* * * * *

Memphis, the cafe owner, has all the answers except why his wife left him two months before. They have four children. Risa, who works for Memphis in the cafe, has an idea.

Prophet Samuel is being buried on a Tuesday. Tuesday in Yoruba is Isegun, Day of Victory or Triumph. Aunt Ester sees visitors on Tuesdays. Prophet Samuel reminds us of Father Divine and Daddy Grace.

Hambone and Risa have a natural affinity. We later learn they both are involved in scarification.

“In some African tribes, it was like wearing your identity card on your face. True, some may hate that, but this was a mark of pride, not shame. In most African cultures, it was a major aesthetic and cultural component as can be seen on sculptures in museums around the world. Scarification patterns on sculptures are not only marks of beauty, but marks of one’s lineage as well, and in some cases protection against evil spirits. Lastly, in Africa like in Polynesia, scarification is more visible on darker skinned people than say, tattoos.” https://afrolegends.com/2015/09/16/scarification-an-ancient-african-tattoo-culture/

A man named Zanelli is behind in servicing the Jukebox. He is the “bringer” of music to the cafe, he controls the atmosphere. The jukebox only plays one song when it works, Aretha Franklin’s “Take a Look” (on the playlist). There a several reference to the broken jukebox throughout the play, a sort of sounding board for the general state of things.

From Wikipedia:

Jukeboxes were most popular from the 1940s through the mid-1960s, particularly during the 1950s. By the middle of the 1940s, three-quarters of the records produced in America went into jukeboxes. Billboard published a record chart measuring jukebox play during the 1950s, which briefly became a component of the Hot 100; by 1959, the jukebox’s popularity had waned to the point where Billboard ceased publishing the chart and stopped collecting jukebox play data.

Traditional jukeboxes once were an important source of income for record publishers. Jukeboxes received the newest recordings first. They became an important market-testing device for new music, since they tallied the number of plays for each title. They offered a means for the listener to control the music outside of their home, before audio technology became portable. They played music on demand without commercials. They also offered the opportunity for high fidelity listening before home high fidelity equipment became affordable.

The invention of the portable radio in the 1950s and the portable cassette tape deck in the 1960s were key factors in the decline of the jukebox. They enabled people to have their own selection of music with them, wherever they were. Jukeboxes became a dying industry during the 1970s, before being revived somewhat by compact disc jukeboxes during the 1980s and 1990s, followed by digital jukeboxes using the MP3 format. While jukeboxes maintain popularity in bars, they have fallen out of favor with what were once their more lucrative locations—restaurants, diners, military barracks, video arcades, and laundromats.

Holloway is a true believer in Aunt Ester, just as Risa is a true believer in Prophet Samuel. Their beliefs seem to co-exist throughout the play. Only Memphis criticizes Risa, and only West criticizes Holloway.

Aunt Esther here and in her other appearances is a true Stoic, advising her visitors always to change the way they look at a situation or a problem. She requires them to throw money into the river, i.e., to lessen their psychological dependence on money as a solution to their problems.

Memphis reminds one of Seth in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone when it comes to “traditional” beliefs, though Seth is the first one to grab the harmonica when it’s time to Juba. To his credit, Memphis credits his victory in court to Aunt Ester, not to his white lawyer. We later learn that Memphis has reading disabilities.

Memphis has a pipe dream of reclaiming his land in Mississippi just like Hambone has a pipe dream of getting his ham. Both are misled by false, unrealizable hopes. Memphis sees that pipe dream in Hambone, but does not see it in himself. Scholars compare this to Hope’s Bar in O‘Neill’s The Iceman Cometh.

Title cut: Two Trains Running. Ties to Doaker’s reflections on train motion in The Piano Lesson. Stovall, who Lymon was indentured to in The Piano Lesson, sold Memphis land without water rights in Two Trains Running, then led a bunch of men in chasing Memphis off the land and slaughtering his mule.

Mass incarceration = stacking niggers? Still working that one out.

Holloway mentions a little bit of history of Prophet Samuel, who was known as Reverend Samuel before he visited with Aunt Ester. Holloway makes a passing reference to Prophet Samuel wearing robes, baptizing people in the river, and going barefooted. That final reference reminded me of a personality known as the Barefoot Prophet who had a small following in my hometown in the 20’s and 30’s, along with his successor who was known as Mr. Bobo. Here is a bit of info: https://www.harlemworldmagazine.com/elder-clayhorn-martin-the-barefoot-prophet-in-harlem-1929/

Philmore the customer from Jitney shows up in Two Trains selling a property to West.

Does Memphis” criticism of “Black Is Beautiful” apply to “Black Lives Matter?” At least “Black is beautiful” was an identity and not a tautology.

Bubba Boy’s wife overdosed. It is the only drug-related death in the Cycle.

Memphis had a cathartic experience when his mother died. He cried, things changed, looked differently. He felt he had been “cut loose.”

West visited Aunt Ester and refused to pay by putting money in the river. Memphis visited and complied with good results.

* * * * *

Two Trains Running, set in 1969, covers a lot of territory. Let’s get started.

There’s much to be said, written and discussed about the play’s title, Two Trains Running. Wilson reveals in an interview with the dramaturg, Richard Pettengill, that

“There are two ideas in the play, or at least two ideas that have confronted black America since Emancipation, the ideas of cultural assimilation and cultural separatism. These were, in my mind, the two trains. I wanted to write a play about a character for whom neither of these two trains were working. He had to build a new railroad in order to get to where he’s going, because the trains are not going his way. That was the idea when I started out exploring.”

There is an element here from the Blind Lemon Jefferson blues tune, whose lyrics, or an excerpt of them, form the epigram of an earlier play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom:

“They tore the railroad down

So the Sunday Special can’t run

I’m going away baby

Build me a railroad of my own.”

And there is a second glimpse into this idea, I think, in the following Doaker monologue in The Piano Lesson, Act 1, Scene 1:

“They go so many trains out there they have a hard time keeping them from running into each other. Got trains going every which way. Got people on all of them. Somebody going where somebody just left. If everybody stay in one place I believe this would be a better world.”

That gets us to a starting point, at least. But as we learn from reading the play, it is only a framework, these two trains. Because in the play we see not two but four options pointed out, though at this point, it is suggested that only three are plausible. By 1969, the accommodationist model highlighted by Kingian non-violence has long since been abandoned and only receives fleeting mention in the diner discussions. What’s left are three discussable routes to inner and outer peace and progress, Prophet Samuel, Malcolm X, and Aunt Ester, and these three receive the bulk of mention as the play unwinds.

* * * * *

Going through each character and his/her contribution(s) to the various plot lines was an interesting way to summarize the play and open up various lines of discussion. It was mentioned that outside his long monologue about “niggers and guns,” Holloway makes no mention of gun violence like some of the other characters.

We spoke at some length about the possible causes of Hambone’s affliction and I think we agreed that the injustice he experienced may not have been sufficient cause for his obsessive fixation(s) in the play. “He gon’ give me my ham!” Upon Hambone’s death we learn that he had lots of cuts and scars on his body. That was connected to Risa’s cuts and self-mutilation, scarification rituals, etc., which led our discussion to the topic of anorexia. Sterling, it was noted, had a special connection to Hambone, and he also had a special connection, attraction to Risa. Risa was very sympathetic and caring with Hambone. The three, Risa, Hambone, and Sterling, formed a sort of mutual triad.

Wolf, the numbers runner, was pretty much a static character throughout. He has a special, though understated affection for Risa, always saying nice things to her and claiming to have a special knowledge of her among the menfolk at the diner. Equally, Wolf has a distaste for West and doesn’t want him handing his body when he dies. Memphis was connected in our discussion to Seth (in Joe Turner) and Caesar Wilkes (in Gem) as a self-made man. He was also described as often mean and cruel to both Hambone and to Risa and it was obvious he was hateful to his wife, though his behavior towards her escaped his own awareness. The play directions say he has “impeccable logic” - that may be Wilsonian tongue-in-cheek. Risa is referred to in the group as the Victorian heroine, long suffering, and angelic. She keeps the diner running and has no fear for her job, despite Memphis’s continuous complaints. She reminds me of Black Mary in Gem, enduring the constant flow of criticisms from Aunt Ester. And West, the undertaker, has a storied history, from petty crime and marginal living to upright and successful entrepreneurism. He somewhat reminds us Caesar Wilks in Gem. We postulated that his black gloves may be a cover for eczema or skin damage from embalming fluid. He pays “Mason” to guard his funeral parlor.

Now for some notes I took in the actual text.

Memphis is the father of four children. Still his wife left him. Memphis resents that Risa donates money to Prophet Samuel. A man named Zanelli runs the jukebox service. Sterling is “fresh” out of prison and that socialization is a big part of his personality. He is caught in a Catch-22 with regard to work and union membership in Pittsburgh. Holloway is a big advocate of Aunt Ester’s counseling services. He draws the link between Aunt Ester and Prophet Samuel. I scribbled in the margins, “Does Hambone represent blacks who demand reparations?” Memphis mentions a Mr. Stovall, also mentioned in The Piano Lesson. Early in Scene Two Memphis mentions “two trains running every day.” Holloway’s mention of “stacking niggers” reminds me of mass incarceration. It also brings to mind images of the middle passage, kidnapped Africans packed like sardines in the hull of slave ships. Memphis says “dead men don’t have birthdays” in reference to a Malcolm X celebration. Holloway points out the superiority of Aunt Ester to Malcolm X anyway. Sterling mentions the time he spent at Toner Institute. That orphanage really existed and operated until 1977, when State and county subsidies could not keep up with rising operational costs.

Memphis’s failure to understand the clause in his deed referencing eminent domain makes me question his level of literacy. Memphis’s monologue at the end of Act One is especially poignant and shows he is at least capable of deep feeling.

Hambone learned to say “United we stand,” but he never repeated “Malcolm Lives.” West mentioned burying an elderly lady, Miss Sarah Degree, also mentioned in Seven Guitars (and again in Radio Golf) as the person who provided home remedies. In real life, Sarah Degree was a lady in Wilson’s childhood who took neighborhood children to Sunday School and church. Wolf speaks of two lady friends he has in Atlanta and quotes, without attribution, Floyd Barton’s song, “That’s all right.” Risa says Prophet Samuel was “sent by God to help the colored people get justice.” Holloway believes in the supernatural. West tells Sterling to get a small cup instead of a ten-gallon bucket, advice that Wilson received from one of his mentors during his youth. Risa plays Aretha Franklin’s Take a Look on the juke box, dances with and kisses Sterling. Risa refuses to see Hambone in the casket, just as she refused to see Prophet Samuel, saying in both cases, “I don’t want to see him that way.”

* * * * *

Looking for a different angle this reading.

Some critics say Two Trains Running doesn’t capture the vitality of the 60’s the way, say, Fences captures the angst of the 50’s. I have to give that some thought. The play is set in 1969, after all the excitement of the 60’s, the greening of American, the civil rights activism, Woodstock, all that stuff has come and gone. The Kennedys have been killed and there is no more hope for Camelot. King and Malcolm X have been killed and those dreams ended. I think by 1969 all the political fantasies are over and done with and people, a bit dazed, are just trying to find their way to some equilibrium, any steady state that will let them get on with their lives. I think this juncture is where Wilson has placed his 60’s play.

There is a passing reference to King, sandwiched in between long monologues about Malcolm X. Memphis says,

“They killed Martin. If they did that to him you can imagine what they do to me or you.”

Earlier he says of Malcolm X,

” Malcolm X is dead. Malcolm ain’t having no more birthdays. Dead men don’t have birthdays.”

And later he deconstructs the Freedom, Justice and Equality of the Nation of Islam by saying 1) freedom is heavy; 2) ain’t no justice; and 3) equality is a nonstarter because people are just not equal to one another. Then he adds a crown to the Black is Beautiful movement by saying its followers sound as if they are trying to convince themselves their blackness is beauty.

Holloway has the solution. When asked why he didn’t become a Malcolm X follower in the early days of his preaching, Holloway responds that he didn’t need to as long as he knew the way to Aunt Ester’s.

That brings us to an important point in the play. Participation in the mass movements of the day is downplayed, and support for local leaders, like Prophet Samuel and Aunt Ester, is highlighted. Risa has been paying tithes to Prophet Samuel’s church, not because she believes in some supernatural intervention, but because she believes Prophet Samuel helps people with legal issues on a day-to-day basis. Holloway recommends Aunt Ester because he can see a change she made in his relationship with his father. These are tangible benefits with certain payoff. Hambone wants his ham and he petitions for it daily with Mr Lutz. I think Memphis’ logic would say even Hambone has a better chance of achieving his objective than some others in the play.

Then there is the ever-present issue of urban renewal breathing down the backs of not only the diner owner, Memphis, but all the folks for which the diner has become a type of second home.  In most places where it was applied, urban renewal became a sort of pipe dream whose goals were never achieved. Long standing neighborhoods were destroyed, families were decimated along with institutions like churches, community centers, and businesses.

This all became a part of the overall environmental malaise of the late 60’s, which, it might be argued, is accurately depicted in the Wilson play. The title, Two Trains Running, may suggest that there are some options available, both in terms of mobility, upward or downward, and in terms of simple navigation. Memphis has a dream of going back south to reclaim his farm, but once he gets his compensation his focus changes to getting a bigger restaurant in a better commercial part of town. By the way, reflecting back on last week’s discussion, there is an indication that Memphis is functionally illiterate when, at the end of Act One, he makes mention of a clause in the deed to his property referencing eminent domain that he doesn’t really understand. Similarly, the deed to his property down south also had a “hidden” clause that perhaps was only hidden to him because he could not read.

* * * * *

Nothing is wasted or superfluous in August Wilson’s plays. So I think we have to assume meaning behind the fact that the only song that plays on the jukebox in Memphis’ diner is Aretha Franklin’s Take a Look, from her Aretha Sings the Blues Album.

Even though the title of the tune is only revealed late in the play, we know throughout that the jukebox is broken and only plays one song, we just don’t know what that song is. I assumed it was Muddy Waters Still the Same, since embedded in the lyrics is one source of the play’s title, Two Trains Running. But beyond the title and one mention by Memphis, “Two Trains Running” seldom shows up in the text.

I am thinking the difference between the two blues songs may hold a clue for us. The Muddy Waters tune is downbeat, even for the blues. Two trains, neither one going in the direction of the destination he desires. Reminds me a bit of that Doaker passage in Act 1 of The Piano Lesson. Allen Toussaint’s Take A Look, on the other hand, whose lyrics are covered by many top vocalists (including Aretha Franklin) and sampled by even more rappers, presents a more even-handed look at reality, and perhaps even cautious optimism about choices for the future, which I think is a theme of Wilson’s play:

“Take A Look”

Take a look in the mirror, look at yourself

But don’t you look too close

‘Cause you just might see

The person that you hate the most

Lord, what’s happenin’ to this human race?

I can’t even see one friendly face

Brothers fight brothers and sisters wink their eyes

While silver tongues bear fruits of poison lies

Just take a look at your children born innocent

Every boy and every girl

Denyin’ themselves a real chance

To build a better world

Dear Lord, dear Lord, what’s happenin’ to your precious dream?

It’s washin’ away on a bloody bloody stream

Take a look at your children before it’s too late

And tell them nobody wins when the prize is hate.

But back to the play.

A couple of things I’d like to highlight. One, this play has more mentions of the N-word than any other of Wilson’s plays, 82 mentions by one count. And more lengthy discussions, especially by Holloway, that include multiple repetitions of the N-Word, i.e., “stacking niggers,” “niggers” mentioned with “guns,” etc. I don’t think this is by accident. I think Wilson is trying to make a point. That point is that despite and because of the repeated mentioning of the N-word, this play is not about race or racism. It is about urban renewal and the resulting “spatial deconcentration” of the black business and urban business community. It is about incarceration and the resulting impact on the community. It is about the interplay between church-based hope and solutions (Prophet Samuel) and spiritual-based outcomes (Aunt Ester) and social movement projections (King, Malcolm X, their deaths and the rallies to promote change that ensued in their wakes). It is about relationships. It is about having jobs and doing work (in the case of Wolf, on the margins of legality) to achieve reasonable economic and social goals. It is even about mentoring. But it is not ABOUT race and racism, as such. I think this was a clear message from Wilson through the characters in this play. A Philadelphia review of the play mentioned in the syllabus goes into greater depth about the aboutness of the play.

Let’s also look at the continuity of character development across Holloway, Bynum (Joe Turner), Doaker (The Piano Lesson) and Toledo (Ma Rainey), all the older guy-type, sage, voice of common sense and experience, the survivor. Holloway has carefully made his choice for Aunt Ester over Malcolm X and Prophet Samuel, although he knows the history of each and how they came into prominence.  Holloway also professes special insight into Hambone’s behavior, giving him more credit than most for his seemingly erratic ways. Perhaps there is another continuity of character development across Memphis, Seth (Joe Turner), and Becker (Jitney), that is, the entrepreneur who operates on the economy’s margin, making tough decisions to keep the employment machine running. As someone in the group said, “we keep on running across the same cast of characters.” Well, almost, but not quite.

* * * * *

1. Title from a blues song by McKinley Morganfield, aka Muddy Waters. Still A Fool. Worth the listening. Railroads and trains played an essential role in America’s westward expansion, and in the migration of blacks from the rural south to the industrialized North.

Well, now, there’s two, there’s two trains running

Well, they ain’t never, no, going my way

Well, now, one run at midnight and the other one,

Running just ‘fore day,

It’s running just ‘fore day,

It’s running just ‘fore day

Oh Lord. Sure ‘nough they is

Oh well

2. The Non-stop personal narratives in Two Trains Running don’t really fit the normal pattern for play construction we have discussed. Even in previous Wilson plays there seems to have been more linear structure. Here characters pop in and out, telling their stories in an almost isolated way. Is Wilson changing the format? Is this a move signifying an embrace of modernism or a return to neoclassicism? Or even a foretaste of postmodernism?

3. Plays, like poetry, are autobiographic, ethnographic, and meta-poetic. Two Trains Running shows Wilson’s development as a playwright, and draws on his background as a short-order cook in Pittsburgh as a young man. Also shows his exposure to such 1960’s luminaries as Malcolm X and his brand or theory of black nationalism, Martin Luther King, Jr and his theory of political nonviolence, and Pittsburgh’s Prophet Samuel (a composite of Washington’s Daddy Grace, New York’s Father Divine, and Chicago’s Elijah Muhammad).

Ethnographic in that plays portray the setting, the scene, the immediate environment of the play, in this case, Memphis’s restaurant. The play is set in the late 1960’s. Urban renewal in cities, especially great migration destination cities, is a key element of the play’s plot and the principal core around which revolve the various narratives of the characters, all restaurant diners.

Finally, plays are meta-poetic in that they say something about plays themselves, the play’s structure, how the action is organized around the plots (or several plots, in this case). How the play begins, how it proceeds and how it ends are all tell-tale signs of the play’s meta-poetic nature.

4. Holloway = Toledo (Ma Rainey) = Bono (Fences) = Doaker (Piano Lesson)  = Bynum (Joe Turner). Similarities in these characters as archetypes of human behavior. Older men, survivors, who sort of keep the narrative(s) on track.

5. Risa = Rose (Fences) = Berniece (Piano Lesson) = Ma Rainey = Bertha (Joe Turner). Strong female figures in the plays so far who relate to male characters in various ways, but always as a central, stabilizing factor.

Risa in Two Trains Running is kind to Hambone, for example, and give Sterling the time of day when no one else does. She manages the restaurant and keeps it “running” as the central location in action. Her self-mutilation is not something that other Wilson women have done in overt ways, but it represents a self-sacrifice, physicalized, that they all have performed. (Let’s not over simplify things, however.)

6. Hambone = Gabriel (Fences) = Sylvester (Ma Rainey). Male characters with a physical handicap/disability who are central to the story as it unwinds (He gonna give me my ham…I want my ham!)

7. And who is the Wilson Warrior? Sterling would be my pick, Sterling who comes from humble and horrible origins, abandoned, orphaned, incarcerated, fired from his job, and excluded from economic development in industrial Pittsburgh by a stupid catch-22 union rule. Yet he fantasizes about the love of his life, externalizes that fantasy onto Risa, and finally finds redemption in committing a crime to pay homage to Hambone.

Extras

Aunt Ester finally appears (but not quite, though we know she is there). There is this triangular thing, a choice between Aunt Ester’s spiritual path, Malcolm X’s black nationalism, and Prophet Samuel’s salvation here-and-now take on things.

West, the undertaker, who knows all about how the city runs, presents a type of developmental redemption moving from a life of petty criminal activity to being a respectable business operator. But Holloway thinks West still has dirt on his hands, notwithstanding the black gloves he wears. West is without love in his life since his wife died.