Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Summary
August Wilson

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Summary

August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, his first play in a ten-play cycle, each chronicling a decade in the African-American experience, was first performed at the Yale Repertory Theater in 1984, though Wilson began writing the play in 1976, after listening to the blues for more than a decade. Set in a Chicago recording studio in 1927, the two-act drama tells the story of a recording session with blues legend Ma Rainey, her band members, and...

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