Audiences are raving about MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM

"You get a chance to see, which you don't get a chance to see often enough, is how black women are depicted in America... She's simply not demanding, but commanding her respect."

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Written by August Wilson
Directed by Ron OJ Parson

This visceral American classic serves as the 1920s chapter of August Wilson's epic American Century Cycle. What begins as a routine recording session becomes more strained as tensions rise between the members of a blues band and the owners of the recording studio. The white producers mean to exploit the talents of the band—especially the gifted and impulsive Levee—but when Ma insists on having things her way, tensions are enflamed and the play builds to an unexpected and searing climax.

Inspired by the real-life Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, this groundbreaking work is the only one of American icon August Wilson’s plays to be set in Chicago. Directed by WT Resident Director Ron OJ Parson (East Texas Hot Links, The Caretaker, The Old Settler), Ma Rainey will envelop you in a vision of the Roaring Twenties defined by Wilson’s remarkably beautiful language and an extraordinary dramatic conflict between ambition, desperation and love for The Blues.

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