There are Wilsonian Warriors with Tonys and Emmys and international reputations, and then there’s the Pittsburgh brigade, sharing the passion for August Wilson’s work with the people in the playwright’s hometown.
Wali Jamal has been one of the local infantry, and in May he joined the rarified group of actors to have appeared in all 10 plays in the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer’s American Century Cycle. He played Elmore in “King Hedley II” for Mark Clayton Southers’ Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company, which is having its second go-round through the cycle, more often than not with Mr. Jamal in the cast.
This past weekend, Mr. Jamal earned an individual badge of honor among the champions of Mr. Wilson’s work. He performed Mr. Wilson’s 11th play, the autobiographical solo show “How I Learned What I Learned,” at the New Hazlett Theater. The 90-minute show has been done by only a handful of actors, including the playwright. It was Mr. Wilson’s last work -- he died at age 60 in 2005.
As far as anyone knows, Mr. Jamal is now the only actor to have performed every Wilson work. After his matinee performance Saturday, Mr. Jamal was presented with a state House of Representatives citation from Rep. Jake Wheatley (D-Allegheny) to mark the occasion.
Mr. Jamal, a Downtown resident, has no formal acting training. The kid who grew up going to the movies at the Mount Oliver Theatre on Brownsville Road found his way to “nearly every theater company in this city.”
In his program for “How I Learned What I Learned,” he writes, “My heartfelt desire is to be the Pittsburgh ambassador of August Wilson's work, no less than a Shakespearean actor would want to celebrate the complete works of the Bard.”
Bringing play No. 11 to the stage has been a struggle. He was thwarted twice in attempts to complete the feat in Atlanta, once by 4 inches of snow that ground the southern city to a halt.
Before this weekend, he performed the play for an audience once before -- at the August Wilson Society Colloquium at the August Wilson Center.
The actor and playwright Eugene Lee had performed the play here previously, in 2015, at Pittsburgh Public Theater.
Mr. Jamal, who entered playing a mean harmonica, mined the humor -- it’s as funny as it is furious -- and human condition that Mr. Wilson so expertly imparts.
The actor spoke not only as August Wilson telling the stories of his youth in the Hill District, looking back as one of America’s most respected men of letters and as one who had experienced all the indignities that this country can put in the path of its black citizens.
With Mr. Jamal as his voice, occasionally wearing literal hats we associate with images of Mr. Wilson, “How I Learned What I Learned” is the overtly personal instance of the playwright schooling audiences on what it’s like to live amid hopelessness and oppression, and battle your way out.
Vivid characters are created from people who embraced and mentored Mr. Wilson and those who held him at arms’ length, or worse. These were each given different voices by Mr. Jamal -- one sounding suspiciously like James Stewart, others with heavy Pittsburgh accents, for example -- so you were never lost as to who was speaking.
The play touches down at different times in Mr. Wilson’s life -- dropping out of school at 15, then educating himself at Pittsburgh libraries before going on to develope plays at Yale and teaching at Dartmouth. The play spends a lot of time on an injustice that shook Mr. Wilson to his core: a single moment that illustrated the deeply rooted racism that was part of his everyday life.
The Pittsburgh references go deep, as well, all part of the history of a one of our own who ranks with the giants of 20th-century playwrights.
Mr. Jamal is now part of that history, too. What he learned by doing this play is the depth of his calling, and he hopes to continue performing “How I Learned What I Learned” wherever it takes him, “and to be an ambassador of Pittsburgh and the work of August Wilson.”
Sharon Eberson: seberson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1960. Twitter: @SEberson_pg.
First Published: September 2, 2018, 2:39 p.m.