August Wilson is America’s premier African American playwright and one of the finest playwrights America has ever produced. He is best known for the 10 plays that he wrote depicting the 20^th Century African American experience one decade — and one play — at a time. While racism is always present in Wilson’s play — even if it is an off-stage presence — they also show the richness of African American culture and resilience in the face of constant trauma.

While almost all of Wilson’s plays are based in the Pittsburgh neighborhood where he grew up, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set in Chicago in 1927. Ma Rainey and her band are recording a record for a studio that is controlled by white people.

Bryant Bentley plays Slow Dog, one of Ma Rainey’s band members who found his true calling late in life. While he performed in church plays as a kid, it wasn’t until adulthood that he took the plunge.

“I was a deputy bailiff working for municipal court at the time,” Bentley said. “But once I figured out that this is what I wanted to do, though, I went to school. I enrolled myself into a community college. The rest is history. It was kind of scary to change horses in the middle of the stream.  It took me some time, lot of prayer but I started slow. I did it part-time until it kind of felt like I was ready to do it. I was entering myself in competitions. Back then, we had showcases that I entered myself into. I won one particular one and I got picked up by an agent in California. So when that happened, it kind of changed the dynamic. And I made the decision to leave the courts. This started actually back in 2019. This is my second season here. But I was just like any other actor. We research. We network with each other and I found out that they were doing the play called Fences. And, I was familiar with August Wilson's work at the time. And I also I knew the director who was directing it. I've been chasing him for 15 years, trying to work with him. And I finally had an opportunity to audition for them and land a role. So, fast forward back here to this season. It was the same situation. We hear about Ma Rainey. I worked with Gavin Lawrence before. They allowed me to come in from Ohio and audition for the role. And thank God, they chose me.”

Chiké Johnson, who plays band mate Toledo, found acting while pursuing what he thought would be a life-time career.

“I was in the military and I actually got to go to college to get my degree in broadcast communications,” Johnson said. “I wanted to be a military reporter. I had to take an elective at the college and I took the introduction to the actor’s art. I kind of fell in love with the idea of being an actor. And it kind of snowballed from there. I spoke to my teacher at the time and said, ‘Would you mind teaching me a little bit more about this acting game?’ And so she started giving me private lessons. And then I decided to split my major into broadcast communications and theater. And then I just dropped out of broadcast. I hadn't declared my career yet. So then the idea of becoming going into broadcasting just kind of fell by the wayside and I started down the hill of acting. And I was 23 when I started auditioning for programs and then I got into the professional theater training program at UWM was no longer exists. And, I started that program, and it just kind of took me all the way to where you see me sitting right now. This is my fifth season. My first season was 2015. I came out and did Othello, The Island and The Merry Wives of Windsor. It was weird. I don't even remember how I got the audition but I was not interested in coming out here to do Shakespeare. And my wife was like, ‘You're going out there. You need to work.’ So, I decided to come on out here to audition and for some reason, they trusted me with the part of Othello.”

While Nathan Barlow, who plays Levee, an up-and-coming jazz artist, looks to be the youngest of actor/musicians, he is actually the most experienced.

“I have been acting and performing professionally since I was eight,” Barlow said. “I went to a performing arts elementary school that my dad helped create. And that got me started at like five-years-old in kindergarten doing plays like Puss N Boots. I think that was my first play I ever did. I played Puss, the title character right away. I started professional theater at age eight. From there, I got many opportunities in Minnesota, which is where I'm from. It has a pretty vibrant theater community. Then I was able to do tours. So I got that side of it. I got to understand the US in that way. I went to places like, Washington, DC and New York. What I like is theater there is really much more vibrant than Minneapolis, so I got to have that experience at a really young age, which was really cool. And then, I went to college, which was like the next step. I enrolled at the University of Minnesota-Guthrie Theater actor training program. I got to learn how to do classical text which was kind of what I had been missing throughout my childhood. So I'm going back to the roots. We went to London with that school. I got a lot of Shakespearean perspective there and started to fall in love with that. I've worked in Minneapolis and now, because of APT, I've worked in Wisconsin. But those are the only places I have really worked. I think that basically encapsulates my journey here.”

Ma Rainey’s premise is the banter that goes on between musicians while they wait to perform. And it is through the banter that Wilson explores the racism and its impact on Black musicians during the heyday of classical jazz. Slow Drag is filled with southern country.

“Slow Drag is a musician, a bass player,” Bentley said. “And, he's more on the naive side out of all these country boys from Arkansas. And he just wants to do the work and go. You know the moment he comes in. He just want to just do these songs and get them right the first time so we can get out of there because he wants to party and drink. You know, he wants to enjoy life outside of a studio and to connect with the others of the opposite sex.  He doesn't talk much about his past, at all. But he tells stories about what happened to certain people who sold their soul to you know who to get ahead.”

Chiké Johnson plays Toledo, the self-taught “professor” of the group whose at times jumbled words  reveal truths about the Black experience.

“I think he's the only one in the band who knows how to read,” Johnson said. “And he uses that knowledge as a way to impart lessons on television. He wants to tie on to some abstract component and sit down on the elementary. So it has a meaning you want to tie onto something. That's very intangible that you can't grab onto but you don't want to do the work to get there. But the way he puts things together, can sometimes be kind of jumbled. But there is a meaning behind everything. I think he's more of the laid back one of the group. But he also tries to be not only the historian, the teacher, or the professor, but also the advisor of the group. I would say he is very much a musician. He's a piano player. And he doesn't really fear what he's been taught. He’s fine to let Levee jazz things up. Levee is the new hotness and Toledo is the old man.”

While Ma Rainey is the main character, Nathan Barlow’s Levee is the protagonist, the new kid on the block whose contemporary tastes in jazz just may end up upsetting the space that the band occupies, for better or worse.

“He's a very determined artist,” Barlow said about Levee. “Levee is very interested in finding the new styling of jazz at the time. Well, he turns on jug band music. It's like old-fashioned, not hip enough music that gets the people to move. Basically the styles that he's talking about are more like the Bebop and the higher functioning jazz that he's wanting to be about and to create. And so his passion is to instill that in the environment around him and there’s a lot of push back. A lot of the play is about him trying to present his new style and the older cats in the band not acquiescing to what he wants and what he's about. And that creates tension. He is trying to get his songs recorded. Back then when recording was booming, when it was like a new thing, it was taking the full focus of America and the world. Getting records produced was huge and so that meant that you became a legitimate artist when you were in that zone of making records. And Levee's not quite there yet. He's still a little young. He doesn't have the following yet. He's really talented but he doesn't have the respect that Ma Rainey does.”

Next Issue: Reveal the racial truths of 1920s America