Thoughts on King Hedley II: Week #8
Huntington Theatre guide to King Hedley II: https://www.huntingtontheatre.org/August-Wilson-Monologue-Competition/AWMC-Plays/King-Hedley-II/
YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0Lvs-e_eIXaqsHCCMTcpz7qemeLe19xv
Session #1
First play named for a character. First true tragedy. But was it really? King is sacrificed, the blood spills on the buried cat that belonged to Aunt Ester, and the curtain falls with the sound of a meow. The cat has one more life? Has Aunt Ester been resurrected perhaps? And does that signal a redemption of sorts? First play with continuation of characters from previous play (Seven Guitars):
1. Canewell becomes Stool Pigeon
2. Red Carter’s son: Mister
3. Ruby continues
4. King Hedley II is son of Ruby and Hedley (and Leroy)
5. Aunt Ester, still unseen, dies
6. Louise raises Ruby’s son King in absentia.
A few things caught my interest in King Hedley II. First of all the Greek Chorus that Wilson has Stool Pigeon provide in the opening of the play. From Wikipedia:
Greek choruses sometimes had a leader known as the coryphaeus. He sometimes came first to introduce the chorus, and sometimes spoke for them if they were taking part in the action. The entrances and exits of the coryphaeus and his chorus served the same way curtains do in a modern theatre.
So Stool Pigeon, who was Canewell in Seven Guitars, now doubles as Seer, Spirit Guide, Supporter of Aunt Ester (like Holloway in Two Trains) and coryphaeus in Wilson’s attempt to connect to Greek classical drama (my spin). Canewell did say in Seven Guitars, “If I could put the music down I would have been a preacher. Many times I felt God was calling. But the devil was calling too, and it seem like he called louder. God speak in a whisper and the devil shout.”
Additionally, Stool Pigeon gets his Bible quotations wrong every time - unless he represents the promotion of a new synthesis of religion/mythology, a blending of Christian concepts with local African American spiritualism and all combined with African ideas of philosophy and religious belief, which puts it in line with previous plays in the series that touted African concepts (Turnbo in Jitney, Toledo in Ma Rainey, Bynum in Joe Turner, ultimately Berniece in Piano Lesson, and Holloway in 7 Guitars).
Tonya has the longest single speaking role (end of Scene 2). It’s a very memorable speech made even more famous because it was spoken by a then relatively unknown Viola Davis, a role for which she won the Tony for best actor.
King signals early on that he is the one “anointed” to make a sacrifice. He asks Mister, and again, asks Stool Pigeon, “Can you see my halo?”
The conversations with King (Act 2, Scene 2) and with Elmore (Act 2, Scene 4) where they describe the choices they made in the taking of human life, both sub-climaxes in the play, are troublesome to say the least. The casual brandishing of weapons, even including Ruby with the palm-sized derringer, is also a bit troubling. And all the petty premeditated criminal acts, selling stolen refrigerators, robbing the jewelry store, all signal a community in the final stages of decay . . .Interesting point raised in class.
What if Stool Pigeon really is the Greek Chorus? And what if he is speaking to a specific audience or saying things that no one else could say and preserve their theatric credibility. Taking it a step further, what if Ruby represents the Greek Siren, luring unsuspecting sailors to shipwreck on a rocky course? Could August Wilson be using these classical “motifs” subconsciously to establish his chops and links to the classical and neoclassical tradition? Wouldn’t that be something? The death of Aunt Ester is an additional climax in the play, as is the accidental death of King at the play’s end. The play has overlapping and intersecting climaxes, in fact.
Events of the mid-1980’s: https://www.thoughtco.com/african-american-history-timeline-1980-1989-45446
1984 – W. Wilson Goode becomes the first African-American mayor of Philadelphia. The Cosby Show makes its debut on NBC. It will become the most successful series featuring an African-American cast in television history.
1985 – Philadelphia mayor W. Wilson Goode orders Philadelphia law enforcement agents to bomb the headquarters of MOVE. The bombing leaves 250 people homeless and 11 dead. Gwendolyn Brooks becomes the first African-American to be named the U.S. Poet Laureate.
1986 – Martin Luther King, Jr.’s national holiday is celebrated across the United States. Six crew members die when the Challenger space shuttle explodes after it launches from the Kennedy Space Center. One of the crew members is African-American astronaut Dr. Ronald McNair.
The Oprah Winfrey show becomes a nationally syndicated talk show. Producer and director Spike Lee debuts his feature film, She’s Gotta Have It.
Mike Tyson becomes the youngest heavyweight champion in the world when he defeats Trevor Berbick.
1987 – Rita Dove wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Reginald Lewis becomes the first African-American CEO of a billion dollar corporation when he orchestrates the buyout of Beatrice Foods. Dr. Benjamin Carson, a neurosurgeon leads a team of seventy surgeons at John Hopkins University Hospital in a 22-hour operation separating Siamese twins.
Dr. Johnetta B. Cole becomes the first African-American woman to preside over Spelman College. Aretha Franklin becomes the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Novelist and essayist James Baldwin dies from stomach cancer.
Session #2 (11.11.2018)
A lot of stuff happens in this 8th play in the August Wilson American Century Cycle, King Hedley II. Lots of events. But none of it sticks with me more, however, than the death of Aunt Ester, the Hill and Cycle matriarch. We may get around to making a list, but let’s begin with Aunt Ester’s death, a sort of central event around which everything else rotates. First, let’s be clear. We know Aunt Ester isn’t over 300 years old as stated. We know by this point in our reading that Aunt Esther represents a series of black women, in an unbroken chain, all of whom have provided advice, wisdom, and practical knowledge to folks who sought her assistance, over the years.
The year of her birth, 1619, aligns with the first recording of Africans from Angola landing by ship in a British colony in Jamestown. Some say they arrived as indentured servants, a legal term describing the physical characteristics of a type of contract, duplicated on either end of a piece of paper, then indented and cut into two pieces with a specific pattern for future authentication. Some say they arrived as slaves. I guess it makes a difference to those who for whom it makes a difference, but on the Hill, and in the world that August Wilson has created, it was the birth year of Aunt Ester. (Note the first recorded African American in the New World accompanied Ponce de Leon in 1513. The first record of African slaves was along the Pee Dee River in the Carolinas in 1526, followed by the Spanish settlement in St. Augustine in 1565.).
What’s most important here is the year not of Aunt Ester’s birth, but of her death, 1985, because it represents, for some reason or reasons we can discuss later, the end of a chain, the end of a continuous personality, present up to this time, in the community. That bodes ill for the Hill and the community. We get the first signal in the Stool Pigeon soliloquy in Wilson’s Prologue, and we immediately know something is off, out of kilter, because no previous play has had such a prologue. Stool Pigeon says, “Aunt Ester knows. But the path to her house is all grown over with weeds, you can’t hardly find the door no more.” Then, early, in Scene 1, Stool Pigeon makes the mournful announcement, “Lock your doors! Close your windows! Turn your lamp down low! We in trouble now. Aunt Ester died! She died! She died! She died!”
King, in Scene 2, after asking Stool Pigeon if he can see King’s halo, points to a gold key ring that Aunt Ester gave him when he used to keep her grass cut. Note: a key ring, not a key. King’s obsession with people seeing his halo (he asks three times throughout the play, to Mister, to Stool Pigeon and to Elmore) might suggest King’s awareness at some level of consciousness that he has been sanctified or chosen for a mission, the subject of a sacrifice.
On the night of Aunt Ester’s passing, a strong wind blew through the neighborhood and all the lights went out for a few moments. Some of the neighbors mourn for three days (modern religion, Catholicism) but some mourn until she is buried (African traditional faith). Stool Pigeon, aka Canewell in Seven Guitars, now the neighborhood historian, mystic and archivist, has a variety of rationalizations regarding events surrounding Aunt Ester’s passing, as do Mister (Red Carter’s son) and King (Hedley’s son). Aunt Ester’s cat dies and Stool Pigeon buries her in the yard near the garden where King is trying to grow flowers. Stool Pigeon decides to get a goat or a fatted calf to pour its blood on the cat’s grave, remarking that Aunt Ester can come back if the cat has any of its nine lives left.
Fast forward to the end of the play. Let’s unpack the action.
Elmore, Mister and King are gambling with dice. King accuses Elmore of cheating and kicks Elmore (who killed his true father, Leroy, years ago, though he just learned that from Elmore).
Elmore tried to get up, but by this time, King has a machete to Elmore’s throat.
King is unable to kill Elmore, and sticks the machete into the ground.
Elmore draws a gun on King and Ruby runs into the house.
Elmore lowers the gun and fires it into the ground (just like King stuck the machete into the ground).
Hearing the gunfire and having last seen Elmore pointing the gun at King, Ruby calls out Elmore’s name.
Ruby enters the yard firing the Derringer she got from Mister earlier thinking she is firing at Elmore, perhaps.
The bullet hits King in the neck, instantly killing him.
King’s blood flows onto the ground near the grave of Aunt Ester’s buried cat.
Stool Pigeon delivers his final monologue, and as the lights go down, the meow of a cat is heard.
King’s spilled blood, already anointed, has revived the cat, by extension, which means there is hope for the resurrection and continuation of Aunt Ester.
More later.
Session #3 King Hedley II (5.8.2019)
I’d like to focus on just three elements of this next to the penultimate play in the American Century Cycle. First, there is the structure of the play, especially with the single narrator Prologue by Stool Pigeon, formerly known as Canewell the harmonica player in Seven Guitars, an expert on roosters. If this play were a Greek tragedy, and some may argue that it may be, Stool Pigeon fulfills the role of the Greek Chorus, and of Coryphaeus, the leader of the Greek Chorus, in the Prologue, and everywhere he speaks in the play. Let that sink in for a minute, then go back through the play and attribute all Stool Pigeon’s speaking parts to the Greek Chorus, beginning at the very end of Scene 1, “Lock your doors! Close your windows! Turn your lamps down low! We in trouble now. Aunt Ester died! She died! She died! She died!“
In brief, the function of the chorus in Greek Drama is to provide commentary on actions and events occurring in the play, to allow time and space to the playwright to control the atmosphere and expectations of the audience, to allow the playwright to prepare the audience for key moments in the storyline, and to underline certain elements and downplay others. Go back and re-read Stool Pigeon’s parts and it becomes evident that is the role he is playing.
And oh, by the way, Stool Pigeon often quoted the Bible throughout the play. But guess what? None of those quotes are actually from the Bible that most folks know about. I postulate in an earlier session that his quotes may actually be from The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, a book written in the early 1900’s that became popular among New Age spiritual groups in the 70’s and 80’s.
The second element that stood our during my reading was King’s insistence, first to Mister (in Act 1 Scene 1) and later to Elmore (in Act 2 Scene 1), that he had a halo above his head. (Could have also been early signs of glaucoma!) King is alerting folks around him (and in the audience) that he has been singled out for a special purpose, a special mission in life.
The play is a tragedy for King. Nothing works out right. He has been lied to all his life about his parentage. He has resorted to a life of petty crime. Now his wife has promised to abort the baby he had high hopes of raising, in his mind possibly his last chance at redemption. He had a relationship with Aunt Ester, and she gave him a gold key ring, but without a key (we’ll get back to that in the third element).
Tonya’s monologue on abortion is the the longest in the play. Abortion can be a touchy subject but the fact that it occupies so much real estate in the play forces us to face it squarely. Tonya’s defense is persuasive (to everybody except King) and equally compelling. Abortions are legal after Roe v. Wade, accessible, and relatively inexpensive. By all measures, it is a convenient option for Tonya for all the reasons she so eloquently states.
But historical numbers and trends tell an interesting story, one to which August Wilson calls our attention. In the aggregate, CDC reports 45,789,558 abortions performed in the U.S. between 1970 and 2015 (California, Maryland and New Hampshire do not report abortions to CDC, so this is by definition an undercount). In 2013, CDC reported 134,814 (37.3%) white, 128,682 (35.6%) black, and 68,761 (19.0) (Hispanic) abortions performed (same under-reporting applies. Overall percentages have been trending lower for whites and higher for blacks and Hispanics over the past few years). Without going into much detail, simple arithmetic says over 16 million black babies aborted since 1970.
Hedley explains at the end of Act 2 Scene 3 what, to him, is the significance of this pregnancy:
“That’s why I need this baby, not ’cause I took something out of the world, but because I wanna put something in it. Let everybody know I was here. You got King Hedley II and then you got King Hedley III. Got rocky dirt. Got glass and bottles. But it still deserves to live. Even if you do have to call the undertaker. Even if somebody come along and pull it out by the root. It still deserve to live. It still deserves that chance.”
Spoiler alert! At the end of the play King dies a grisly, ritualistic death, cementing his personal tragedy. But there is yet redemption in King’s ultimate price payment. His spilled blood (he is shot in the neck) makes its way to the grave of Aunt Ester’s cat and the cat returns to life (magical realism) with a meow as the lights go down and the set fades to black. Maybe it means there is a possibility for a resurrection of Aunt Ester and salvation for her people. We have to read Act Three to know for sure.
OK. The third element. The Key to the Mountain. Early in Act 2, Scene 5, King returned to the yard, having learned earlier that Leroy was his real father, and carrying his false father’s machete, loaded for bear (Elmore). Scene 5 has competing choruses, spurring King on to two alternate and opposite outcomes. Mister, son of Red Carter in Seven Guitars, tells King, “Blood for blood,” urging him to fulfill a destiny of extracting revenge, that will surely result in his death. Meanwhile, Stool Pigeon reminds King, “You got the Key to the Mountain,” which is forgiveness even in the face of a great wrong, an alternate destiny that results in life. King chooses forgiveness, sticking the machete into the ground. In turn, Elmore chooses to forgive, firing his gun into the ground and not towards King. Then, confused perhaps from the sounds in the yard, Ruby appears and fires the pistol Mister gave her, without looking perhaps, we don’t really know, fatally shooting King in the throat.
In the battle of competing choruses, Stool Pigeon wins out, King fulfills his destiny, and his sacrifice restores life to Aunt Ester.
Session #4 – King Hedley II notes (5.5.20)
First, I note again that this is the only play in the cycle named for an ensemble character.
Prologue
King Hedley II is one of only two plays in the cycle that contains a formal prologue, the other being Gem of the Ocean. Seven Guitars has a first scene that plays the role of a prologue, though it is not formally named as such. Similarly, four plays, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, and Fences have very beautifully written scene setters and “The Play” introductions. Rounding out the cycle, Two Trains Running and Radio Golf have neither prologues or scene setters and, instead, plunge the reader or playgoer directly into the action of the first act.
Additionally, the Prologue in King Hedley connects us by theme or by content to four other plays in the cycle, Two Trains Running (mention of ham bones), Gem of the Ocean (the prevalence of Aunt Ester mentions), Seven Guitars (Stool Pigeon, the narrator, exists as younger Canewell in Seven Guitars), and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (the narrator sounds peculiarly like Bynum).
Finally, Stool Pigeon sets up in the Prologue that something less than pleasant is about to befall the cycle’s heroine, Aunt Ester. As readers and playgoers, we are placed on warning of ominous things to come.
The Halo
King seems obsessed throughout the play with the existence of a halo around his head and his concern that other people may or may not be able to see said halo. (A halo is a circle of light around the head of a holy figure, whether a saint, an angel, or a god). Why might King be concerned about having a halo? On three separate occasions, King’s halo is the subject of conversation: between Mister and Tonya in Act 1 Scene 1; King asks Stool Pigeon in Act 1 Scene 2; and in Act 2, Scene 1, King asks Elmore. On one level, it appears King is seeking affirmation or approval or recognition from his closest friends. But on another level, we have to ask the question, is King OK mentally? Based on other things he has said and decisions he has made, I think we have to wonder about King’s mental health state.
Of course, that begs a different, bigger and broader question. How much of this life of incarceration, joblessness, and government-sanctioned mistreatment can a normal person be expected to take and to endure before they mentally reach a breaking point? And is that the goal? And is that what August Wilson is pointing out in the cycle of plays? These are questions that might arise and need to be considered.
Criminal Activity
King and Mister have a couple of on-going criminal activities they are involved in. They seem to move into and out of criminal activity and back to their “normal” lives with ease and without a second thought. That is slightly concerning.
King and Mister are hustling stolen refrigerators with a guy King served time with to make money to invest in a video store (that may be a pipe dream, but it seems plausible). When Elmore arrives, he is easily drawn into the refrigerator hustle because it makes money (it’s funny, I found myself comparing this hustle to the practice in Fences of buying furniture and appliances from a door-to-door salesman who has inside knowledge that people have been refused credit. While usurious, this is considered completely legitimate.)
When hustling refrigerators is not turning over cash fast enough, King and Mister decide to rob a local jewelry store. King is an ex-con (I’m not sure about Mister but it seems like he might be) and one would think he would think twice about something that might land him back in prison. But no! Without much forethought or planning, they decide on the spur of the moment to rob a nearby jewelry store! And it appears they get away with it!
It seems the threat of incarceration is no longer a disincentive to criminal activity. That is a worrisome state!
Death of Aunt Ester
At the end of Act 1 Scene 1 we learn that Aunt Ester has died. That singular event controls and forms the pivot for the remaining of the action and plot development of the play. There is no longer a source of wisdom in the community, nobody to go to for counseling, soul-washing, or just friendly motherly advice. It’s a big loss to the community and to the ensemble, many of whom had previous interactions with Aunt Ester. Aunt Ester’s house reappears in Radio Golf in a central role, but absent any magical realism injections, Aunt Ester’s direct influence is done.
Neesi
Neesi was apparently King’s first love and Tonya thinks he is still carrying a torch for her. There is an interesting process Wilson uses to weave Neesi into the story line and into our minds as readers and playgoers. King introduces her in Scene 2 in the imperfect past when he tells Mister he used to tell her he wanted to have a baby. Then, a bit later, King talks about not being able to get Tonya off his mind now that he is with Tonya. Then a few lines later he mentions that Neesi testified against him, betraying his trust. Then, and only then, we learn that Neesi got killed in a car accident and because he was in prison King wasn’t able to get out to go to the funeral.
Miscellaneous
I’ve written earlier about King’s sense of honor, and about his cavalier attitude towards committing murder. I don’t think I’ve written or even mentioned King as the quintessential Stoic (within bounds). King is aware of the limits of his control over things, i.e., his judgements and opinions, not external things. He says in Scene 2,
“I set me out a little circle and anything come inside my circle I say what happen and don’t happen. God’s in charge of some things. If I jump in and shoot you I ain’t gonna blame it on God. That’s where I’m the boss . . . I can decide whether you live or die. I’m in charge of that.”
Let’s look for a minute at another silent character, Walter Kelly. We are first introduced to Walter Kelly in Scene 2 in a conversation King is having with his mother, Ruby. He says to her, “Go on now and leave me with my business. I don’t need you to tell me nothing. Go tell Walter Kelly.” (p.43). At this point, we don’t have any notion who Walter Kelly is, but we assume he is someone Ruby had some dealings with while she was away during King’s youth. Then, in Scene 3 (p.50), Ruby spills the tea. In a conversation with Mister, she reveals that Mister’s father, Red Carter, introduced Ruby to Walter Kelly in East St. Louis. Kelly, a musician, was putting his band together and wanted Ruby to sing with him. Then, later on, in Act 2 Scene 3 (p. 83), Ruby, in a bit of locker room talk with Tonya, gives us explicit details about their break-up while explaining her decision to stop singing.
One more little thing. In Scene 2 (p.28), there is an exchange between Ruby and Stool Pigeon that seems a bit of a non-sequitur.
Ruby: You old buzzard! Go on in the house!
Stool Pigeon: I don’t want you, woman!
Why would he say that to her with barely a provocation? There must be history there (no evidence of bad blood between the two in Seven Guitars. Maybe its just a one off).
Finally, I wrote a great deal in previous sessions about Tonya’s decision to get an abortion. However, on close inspection, it appears that Tonya didn’t even get the abortion despite all her protestations and justifications. At the end of Act 2, Scene 3, Tonya says to King, “Your job is to be around so this baby can know you its daddy.” There was no abortion and its mention was just a red herring by Wilson to get us thinking about it.
Consolidated notes on King Hedley II
YouTube Playlist on King Hedley II
Session #5
Dear friends: Is it me or do the plays seem to be getting harder and harder to wrap one's brain around?
I went to Goodreads. All the King Hedley II reviews (except mine) seem rather lukewarm, almost as if August Wilson hit some type of slump. I have some ideas.
For one, this play is about the 80's. And we can remember the 80's. So perhaps unconsciously, we look for stuff we remember. But our glance returns to us fatigued, exhausted. It seems there's nothing in this play we can relate to.
Well, speak for yourself, Ray.
The 80's were a bit of a lost decade for me. I spent the first half punching holes in the water, as they used to say, doing engineering work on deployed submarines and in shipyards. The second half I spent two years at a small college in Florida, having the time of my young life. That was followed by three years on a 30 year old destroyer, trying to nurse an aged ship and an obviously failed marriage, broken by too frequent separations for months at a time and instances of my own stupidity and immaturity. I wrote in my memoir that by the end of the 80's I was slipping into darkness, to quote the lyrics of a then popular song. It was not a part of my plan. A poetry writing lady saved me from the abyss. A poetry writing man saves us all, perhaps. Maybe. Almost.
OK. Now we begin to see stuff in the play, perhaps. Man, I need some coffee.
The casual references to crime and to committing criminal acts in the play seem both strange and off-putting. King and Mister don't seem to think twice about selling stolen refrigerators, or even robbing a local jewelry store. Not once does the idea of returning to jail serve as a deterrence to committing more crime, because, I suppose, "we won't get caught this time." Silly and senseless. King's overreactions to petty indiscretions and daily microaggressions seem overwrought.
Aha! At this point we have accepted the status quo.
King and Elmore share their experience of performing the act of murder, the act itself, and how it made them feel. But it is outside the realm of our experience. They no longer seem sympathetic. Even Tonya's long monologue about the abortion she wants to get (and never does, we find out later) might seem out of place for our sensibilities because either 1) it's not a part of our experience, or 2) if it is, we don't want to think about it.
Finally, no mention is made in the play of the crack cocaine pandemic of the 80’s. You think Hill residents were spared the ravages of that scourge? I don’t think so. It is there, between the lines.
Spoiler alert! King wins the battle between revenge and forgiveness in the end. Yet he still dies, he has to die. He's been wearing the halo and his blood sacrifice is what's required. He is the fatted calf Stool Pigeon has been looking for. The meow of the dead cat as the final curtain falls signals to us that there is cause for hope. This tragedy is Judeo-Christian, not Greco-Roman. Aunt Ester's children will find their redemption. It is just a matter of time.
Ray
p.s. Here is the YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0Lvs-e_eIXaqsHCCMTcpz7qemeLe19xv
Consolidated notes from previous sessions
Here's my review in Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3951870148
Postscript. More on the death of Aunt Ester
First to clear the air. Notwithstanding the mathematics of Aunt Ester’s age, the arrival of Angolan indentured servants to Jamestown in 1619 was not the first recorded instance of Africans in the continental United States. Ponce de Leon was accompanied by African Juan Garrido in Florida in 1513, in search of the Fountain of Youth. The first group of enslaved African arrived to the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine in 1565. 1619 marks the first arrival of Africans to a British settlement.
There is the suggestion in the text of the play from King, by way of Mr. Eli, that Aunt Ester, the matriarch of the Hill community and guardian of its culture, traditions and history, died of grief, with her hand stuck on her forehead. Then there is the suggestion, promoted by the now-spiritual seer Stool Pigeon, that Aunt Ester had to be removed in anticipation of some final judgement.
Either way, the passing of Aunt Ester is a significant turning point for the neighborhood, especially for those who sought her counsel at various occasions, including Stool Pigeon, Mister, King and Ruby.
Aunt Ester’s passing, more significantly, marks a turning point for the Cycle. First introduced chronologically in Gem of the Ocean, Aunt Ester dissuaded Ruby from getting an abortion in Seven Guitars, actively counseled characters in Two Trains Running, dies in King Hedley II, and figures prominently in Radio Golf. Aunt Ester’s Stoic teachings of sacrifice, self-knowledge, and personal responsibility held the community together through many stuggles over the decades of the Cycle. Now, in her absence, for those who know, there is curiosity about how the community will survive.
At the closing off the final scene, blood from King’s fatal bullet wound flows into the grave of Aunt Ester’s cat and we hear a “meow” as the curtain falls. There is a suggestion that Aunt Ester may yet be with us and that all will not be lost.
Postscript. Reimagining George Floyd as King Hedley II (and vice versa).
King Hedley is a complicated character. He seems to have an anti-Midas touch, i.e., nothing he touches turns to gold. A good way to understand him is by comparing him to George Floyd, another complicated character. Floyd, like Hedley, was a seeming ne’er-do-well with a predilection for violence and criminal activity. Floyd even exceeded Hedley when it came to fathering five children across the country that he in turn abandoned. He was a failed athlete and a failed hip-hop artist, spending most of his adult life in and out of prison serving eight jail terms for various minor charges and convictions. He was stopped for passing counterfeit money. His toxicology report revealed his illegal and illicit drug use.
Because of the circumstances surrounding his death, George Floyd’s memory has been lionized and the sins of his prior life forgiven and forgotten. Peaceful protestors have demanded stern punishment for the police officer associated with his passing. Floyd’s death has been co-opted by politicians for political fundraising and support for calls to reform and defund police departments across the country.
Hedley did time on a murder conviction and was involved in a series of petty crimes following his release. His death was an accident and not in the commission of a crime. His spilled blood flowed to a place in the yard where Aunt Ester’s cat had been buried. We are led to believe in the play that the blood offering gave the cat a new life, a resurrection of sorts, that in turn would provide new spiritual life to Aunt Ester, who had recently died.
For NaPoWriMo, I wrote a poem I called “Hedley’s Blues,” highlighting these and other similarities. In the end, Hedley’s unwilling sacrifice provided unforeseen opportunities for renewal for his community. Here is the poem:
Hedley’s Blues
They ask us to require this sacrifice.
Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth. Blood for blood.
This sacrifice will somehow make us whole,
Cure our ailments, fill the gaps you left
When they sold you down river for a song.
Those who bought you never knew stolen goods
Was all you were, living on borrowed time
And leaving casualties in your wake.
You were the sacrifice, the fatted calf,
your unwilling blood a fitting offering
To the gods. Once. Spilled on the seeded ground
Of hopes and dreams – your intoxication.
There’s no balm in revenge. So there’s no need
For a present value calculation.
Session #6
Greetings, all: Hope you all had a great holiday time with family and friends. We had a nice road trip to North Carolina for Thanksgiving, visiting with extended family and folks in the old neighborhood where my sister and I grew up.
Concurrently, while home last week, I completed Dante's Inferno and transitioned to Purgatorio. The transition held great meaning as I left Washington and reunited with family and friends from my childhood.
There are several quasi key events in King Hedley II that bear discussion. There is the death of Aunt Ester. There is the nonchalance with which King and Mister plot the jewelry store robbery, not to mention the selling of obviously stolen refrigerators, enough alone to, if caught, land King back in prison. There is the casualness with which King and Elmore discuss the murders they committed, nearly without remorse (I say nearly - we will get back to that). There is the decision by Tonya to get the abortion and King's protests (ultimately she does not get the abortion - we will discuss that later also). There is, finally, the showdown between King and Elmore, spurred on by Mister where both decide to forego violence and take the path of forgiveness, The Key to the Mountain, Stool Pigeon would describe (the key, Dante says in Purgatorio, that unlocks the knot of wrath, yet another story), only to have Ruby fire the magic bullet that mistakenly (Wilson would have us believe) ends the life of her son while at the same time presenting his life as the fatted calf for sacrifice.
Whew, that was a long sentence and a long paragraph! And there are more side stories!
Aunt Ester
The Prologue sends us a signal that something really tragic is about to happen that will shake up the community. By the end of Act 1, Scene 1 we know what it is - the death of Aunt Ester. But before that revelation, all the other elements of the interlocking and overlapping plot lines are revealed: the mother-son tension between Ruby and King and King's deep resentment towards his mother; the metaphor from Ruby about King planting his seed in bad soil; Aunt Ester's cat watching the hole for two days; the stolen refrigerators mess; KIng's first mention of dreams about wearing a halo; the announcement that Pernell's cousin (King's victim) is seeking revenge; Elmore's letter to Ruby announcing his return; Tonya and Natasha mother-daughter issues, and Mister's marriage failure. And then the boom: Aunt Ester's death.
Stool Pigeon points out that the Bible advises three days of grief while "some people," i.e., African spiritualism, calls for mourning until burial. King had an ongoing relationship with Aunt Ester, whose grass he used to cut to keep clear the path to her house. He also ran errands for her to the drug store. She gave him a gold key ring (but not a key).
The tale of the jewelry store robbery
It didn't take King and Mister long to figure out they might come up short in their fund-raising efforts to open a video store, given the low profit margin on stolen refrigerators. But in the absence of GoFundMe and wealthy friends/family who could contribute, they decided to rob a local jewelry store. No big deal - they'd don ski masks, stage the heist mid-day, and add the stolen funds to their investment kitty. Easy peasy. What is amazing is that they never paused to consider all the possible consequences of what they were planning/doing. It was just natural when King mentioned it for Mister to go along with it. Mind-boggling.
Murder as a rite of passage
In Act 2, Scene 2, Elmore and King have a sort of father-son chat, well maybe man-to-man is more descriptive, about what motivated them each to commit murder. Elmore regrets the future he took away from his victim, Leroy. Later in Scene 3, King talks about passing Pernell's tombstone and not knowing that Pernell had a son. He realizes in the same scene that murder didn't make him a "big man." On the other hand, both agree that taking a life is no small task and is accompanied by a perverse type of power surge (my words).
Tonya's abortion
Tonya (played by Viola Davis on Broadway that makes her presentation all the more powerful) gives us all the logic and justification why a poor woman, pregnant, would seek out the abortion option. As an aside, we later learn that Ruby visited Aunt Ester once, thinking she was an abortion provider. She eventually developed a spiritual connection to/with Aunt Ester, as did her son, King. But back to Tonya. Spoiler alert! Tonya never got the abortion. She says to King late in Act 2, Scene 3, "Your job is to be around so this baby can know you its daddy. Do that. For once, somebody do that. Be that. That's how you be a man, anything else I don't want.
I'll leave it to you all to check out my previous session notes on what I consider the tremendous loss of human potential and possibility since 1973 when Roe v Wade became the law of the land. Here are a couple of links.
https://augustwilsonstudygroup.wordpress.com/2021/04/21/thoughts-on-king-hedley-ii/
King and Elmore's victory and King's ultimate sacrifice
To make it short, when King learns that Leroy was his actual father, he considers exacting revenge on Elmore. Mister spurs him on, in fact, taunts him with cries of "blood for blood!" Meanwhile, Stool Pigeon reminds King and Elmore, in a metaphorical way, that forgiveness is the "Key to the Mountain" for both. Eventually Stool Pigeon's advice carries the day, with King backing off and putting the machete in the ground and Elmore firing his bullets into the ground. But when Ruby hears Elmore's gun fire, she assumes a different outcome and fires her gun without looking (we are led to believe). The fired bullet finds King's neck, a mortal wound. KIng's blood fills the grave of Aunt Ester's cat, buried by Stool Pigeon in the garden. As the curtain goes downand the lights fade to black, we hear a faint "meow," a suggestion that, well, you know what it means. We will discuss.
There is a lot more and I look forward to our Sunday meeting. It's been two weeks and I have missed y'all!
post discussion notes 12/6/2021. I hope the “unpacking” of the final scene through a live reading was helpful. Let’s try that again next week with City of Bones scene in Gem of the Ocean! I’ll be reaching out for volunteers. King Hedley II is a complex play and several group members voiced their frustration with if not their dislike of the play in general. But we had a great discussion anyway! Riley Temple does an excellent job of summarizing the play in his book, Aunt Ester’s Children Redeemed, as does Alan Nadal in four (yes four!) essays he edited in his book, August Wilson: Completing the Twentieth Century Cycle.
I hadn’t fully considered Ruby’s mental state at the play’s finale until we unpacked it and someone said, “Ruby has snapped!” As my sister-in-law observed when she visited us in Angola (and it may be equally applicable in August Wilson’s imagined world), it’s a wonder more people don’t “snap” given the daily pressures, frustrations and disappointments they have to endure. But again, it took role playing the final scene to fully bring that to light.
Two more plays and our journey is done. Tighten your life vests and tuck those loose straps away. The ride is pretty bumpy at the end of the Cycle!
Session #7 — draft blog post on King Hedley II
King Hedley II, named ostensibly for his father, King Hedley of Seven Guitars fame, is the biological son of a man Ruby was involved with before she left Birmingham. The plot thickens intertemporally as we learn that (1) Elmore, Ruby’s current suitor, murdered Hedley’s biological father, Leroy, over what amounted to a gambling debt, (2) King murdered Pernell because he called him Champ instead of King, and (3) the original Hedley murdered Floyd Barton in a drunken rage over a misunderstood dream. Yet, at an esoteric level, King Hedley II emerges as a spiritual being (“Do you see my halo?”) whose ultimate self sacrifice (the fatted calf) opens the path for the return of the Cycle matriarch, Aunt Ester, who died earlier in the play, foreshadowed as the curtain falls at the play’s end.
There’s a lot to unpack there.
King Hedley II, the play, is about rebirth and renewal, self discovery, self-actualization, and self-transcendence.
As the play opens, King is tending to a small garden, hoping to grow flowers from seed for his wife, Tonya. His mother tells him the soil is bad and not sufficient for growing flowers. A metaphor within a metaphor, we learn in the next scene that Tonya is pregnant, that King has implanted his seed in Tonya, in a manner of speaking. King’s impassioned reasoning about why he needs an offspring to carry forth to the next generation, is exceeded only on Tonya’s protestations about the pregnancy and her stated intention to have an abortion. This is the first and only mention of abortion in the entire Cycle of plays, and the play may be referred to as Wilson’s abortion play. Not always a pleasant subject, I think Wilson included it so we could have the conversation.
But getting back on track, King himself represents a seed planted in what may be called nutrient-poor soil. Yet he lives, and by some measure, perhaps, he thrives. He has a dream of running a chain of video stores, a franchise, which was popular in the 80’s. King is a hustler. He and his best friend sell refrigerators of dubious origin to people who may not be able to afford them otherwise. He robs a jewelry store with the same friend, Mister, who is also the son of a Seven Guitars character, Red Carter. He served time for committing a murder. His rap sheet is long and his record is horrible, and yet, he senses in his own self that he is redeemable. He knows his past, yet still, he wonders, repeatedly, if people around him see his halo. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. . .” King’s association with Aunt Ester during her life (he did yard work for her and ran errands to the drugstore) convinced him that he had a purpose in life.
Fast forwarding to the play’s final scene, in a somewhat showdown between King and the murderer of his actual father, Elmore, King ultimately chooses the high ground of forgiveness over blood vengeance and repeating the cycle of violence and death. Elmore similarly chooses the high ground. For a moment, there is hope for the world. For their world. That moment of peace is punctured, however, by a speeding bullet whose intended destination remains unstated. We cannot conclude from the text of the play if Ruby’s intent was to kill her boyfriend and fiance in defense of her son, or her son in defense of her boyfriend. And it is obvious that Wilson wants us to ponder. But we do know the symbolism of the blood from King’s mortal bullet wound flowing into the ground where Aunt Ester’s cat was buried. We know the metaphor because we’ve all been initiated into the same secret society. And when we hear the cat meow as the curtain falls, we know there is hope for the future.
Session #8 — King Hedley II at Dominion Stage/Gunston Theatre, Arlington. 10282022
It was our first time seeing King Hedley II performed live on stage. Of course seeing a performance on stage is different from reading a play in a book, though one may inform the other. I had read King Hedley II multiple times for several iterations of our study group and had trained my imagination for what I was expecting to see on the stage. My earlier blog posts are here and here.
Arriving at the theatre and thumbing through the playbill (a single folded page, to get the full playbill you had to scan a QRC code to read it on your phone. How modern!), I saw that Stool Pigeon was being played by a woman, Jacqueline Youm. “Hmm,” I thought to myself, “that’s interesting.” But my mind was open to it. We’ll get back to that later.
The lights dim and the play begins. The first person who speaks is the female Stool Pigeon. I thought I knew what to expect as I had read and written about the play in this blog numerous times. But OMG, this actress (and director) took the Stool Pigeon/Greek chorus role to a whole new level, a delightful place, which would be repeated every time Stool Pigeon spoke throughout the play!
Here is how they did it. But first some background. Stool Pigeon was previously known as Canewell in the prequel to King Hedley II, Seven Guitars. Canewell was kinda sorta around when Hedley killed Floyd Barton with a machete to his windpipe in a bit of a drunken rage. In the intervening years, apparently, Canewell divulged that it was Hedley who killed Barton, earning the moniker Stool Pigeon, a person acting as a decoy or an informer. Additionally, and as a dramatic device, Stool Pigeon, plays the role of the Greek chorus in this very Greek tragedy, providing the prologue. From an earlier blog post,
In brief, the function of the chorus in Greek Drama is to provide commentary on actions and events occurring in the play, to allow time and space to the playwright to control the atmosphere and expectations of the audience, to allow the playwright to prepare the audience for key moments in the storyline, and to underline certain elements and downplay others. Go back and re-read Stool Pigeon’s parts and it becomes evident that is the role he is playing.
So, there is Stool Pigeon, there is Canewell (his earlier manifestation and perhaps, his alter ego), and there is the Greek chorus role he (or she) plays. But this production adds yet another feature to the character as written. When Stool Pigeon recites from his book (it sounds like the Bible, but I checked the quotes and it just isn’t), he takes on a completely different persona, in his tone of voice, in his posture, in his whole being. He becomes a sort of oracle, a high holy man, a priest. Then, as soon as his recitation is complete, he collapses, in a way, and returns to his normal self, a sort of trickster who collects newspapers (an archivist, perhaps?) and has seen it all in this small urban village.
Jacqueline Youm plays a very convincing role as this most complex character, which the audience recognizes in their responses throughout the play and at the final curtain call. George Bernard Shaw, the great Irish playwright wrote, “It is in the nature of great acting that we are not to see this woman as Ophelia, but Ophelia as this woman.” After last night, I have a whole different idea about Stool Pigeon.
Other actors were also exceptional. Mack Leamon provides a spectacular interpretation of King Hedley II, the only play in Wilson’s Cycle named for one of its characters. You get from his bio that he is both a seasoned actor AND a seasoned Wilson performer. It shows.
Vanessa McNair, a novice to the stage, serves us an admirable Tonya, wife of King Hedley. Her monologues, some of the most popular in all of Wilson’s plays (as evidenced in monologue competitions across the country) are delivered clearly and with punch and panashe. She is no Viola Davis, who won a Tony for best actress in the role. Perhaps the theater-goers are better off for it.
My only complaint in this production was the failure to fully capitalize on the meow of the cat at the beginning of the play and at the final curtain. Aunt Ester, the matriarch of the Cycle, dies in the course of King Hedley II. The meow of the cat at the beginning of the play, for me, foreshadows the meow of the cat at the very end, when slain Hedley’s blood flows into the soil where Aunt Ester’s cat is buried, symbolizing the “resurrection” of the spirit of Aunt Ester and all that means for the community.
The play runs through November 5. I am giving serious consideration to seeing it again. Don’t miss this excellent (and full of surprises) production if you are in the area.
Session #9 — Some notes on King Hedley II for DCPL 12.01.2022
These are just some random thoughts from my notes and later, our discussion.
Wilson dedicated the play to his mentors and colleagues, to Rob Penny and Nicholas Flournoy and Chawley Williams, all cofounders with Wilson of the Centre Ave Poets and later, the Black Horizons Theatre. Williams, a bit older, was a mentor to a teenage August Wilson, and some sources say Williams’ somewhat chaotic life provided the model for Wilson’s depiction of King Hedley in the play. Legend also has it that Williams, a former heroin addict, slammed a fellow addict’s head into the wall for offering a young August Wilson a hit of heroin.
It bears repeated mention here that King Hedley II is the only play in the Cycle named for one of the characters and that it is the first play to begin with a defined prologue. It is also the first play in the Cycle to serve as a sequel to an earlier play, Seven Guitars. Both plays have the same set, the backyard of Wilson’s house in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, and several characters repeat from one play to the next, either as themselves or as their offsprings, giving some sense of continuity to the sequence of the plays over the generations.
How about the position of the play in the overall Cycle? King Hedley II holds the center position in the sub-sequence we refer to as the Aunt Ester plays, third of five beginning with Two Trains Running and ending with Radio Golf. Aunt Ester’s death early in the play sets the tone for the rest of the play, even though lots of plot action not related to Aunt Ester continues in the background and the foreground.
Tonya’s monologue is one of the longest in all the plays in the Cycle. This play focuses in on abortion in a way that it has not focused on current issues in most of the plays. See my earlier notes on this subject. In the end, Tonya speaks in present tense about the baby and its needs, suggesting that the pregnancy was never terminated.
Speaking of termination, the play has lots of talk about murder as an almost everyday occurrence. There are echoes of Hedley I’s murder of Floyd Barton in Seven Guitars, we know Elmore killed Leroy over a gambling debt, and King killed Pernell over a name calling episode. It also gets mentioned that Pernell’s cousin killed a man over an argument at a football game and some one mentioned reading that Pernell’s father committed several murders. Stool Pigeon says he once saw a man get killed over a fish sandwich. There is a lot of murder, a lot of death.
Similarly, characters appear almost nonchalant about planning and executing crimes, especially the midday jewelry store heist that King and Mister pull off. King and Elmore have some deep conversations about manhood, about being a person in the world, and not everything they say comports with reality. Although it may sound good, and although you may be inclined to agree with what’s being said, you catch yourself when you realize it is totally absurd. Like their conversation about honor and dignity towards the end of Act 1. Wonderful talk, but no honor or dignity in it, really.
King and Mister’s plan to start a video business by selling hot refrigerators and robbing jewelry stores comes off as a bit of a pipe dream, but as a dramatic device it keeps the story moving forward. As a playgoer or as a reader, though, does anybody believe the whole video store vision will ever come to past? It is hardly a credible proposition.
Stool Pigeon plays a key role in the narrative arc of the play. I have written in earlier session notes that Stool Pigeon serves as the chorus in this Greek drama. I won’t beat that dead horse here. Stool Pigeon’s biblical, almost scriptural manner of speaking also serves the function of suffusing the flavor of folkloric tradition throughout the play.
At the end of the play we ask ourselves the question, who was the most tragic figure in King Hedley II? Was it King, who lived a chaotic and disappointing life and experienced a humiliating death? Was it Ruby, who loses a son who never truly acknowledged her as a mother? Was it Elmore, who, now in his 60’s is dying from cancer after surviving prison and a broken heart? Was it Tonya, who has lost a husband and whose unborn child is losing a father? Was it Aunt Ester, who died with her palm stuck to her forehead in worry and concern for her community? Was it the community? Is it all of humanity, including the play readers and the theater-goers watching the play.
And what becomes of Ruby? Does she marry Elmore and live happily ever after? Someone suggested that perhaps Ruby had a nervous breakdown, symbolized by her sitting on the ground singing “Red Sails” after firing the gun whose bullet kills her son.
My blog post on the recent King Hedley performance in Arlington: https://augustwilsonstudygroup.wordpress.com/2022/10/29/king-hedley-ii-at-dominion-stage-gunston-theatre-arlington-10282022/
Earlier blog post for the August Wilson Society: https://augustwilsonstudygroup.wordpress.com/2022/09/06/draft-blog-post-on-king-hedley-ii/
Previous session draft notes: https://raymondmaxwell.substack.com/p/fe8a23bb-27f1-4d81-80d7-241495728e06