‘The Piano Lesson’ Director Malcolm Washington on Adapting August Wilson’s Haunting Play For a New Generation: ‘The Vision We Were Presenting Is Pretty Bold’
variety.comAngelique Jackson The first time Malcolm Washington attended the Toronto International Film Festival, he was a spectator, along for the ride as his older brother, actor John David Washington, debuted a film. “I’m a movie lover — like, I’m a student of the game and a fan first, so I was watching a bunch of movies.
I remember sitting there like, ‘I hope I get to experience this on the other side of it,’ Malcolm Washington tells Variety. That memory sprang to mind when he learned that “The Piano Lesson,” his film adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play and his feature directorial debut, had been selected for TIFF. “It’s surreal.’” When the Netflix film makes its international premiere on Tuesday night at the Princess of Wales Theatre, Malcolm won’t take the “seasoned vet approach.” He plans to sit through the screening. “You make movies for audiences — to connect with people, to have that shared experience,” he says. “I want to enjoy that too.
To hear the groans, or the laughs, or the shrieks of horror, or the tension in the room.” Washington first encountered Wilson’s haunting 1987 play — set in 1936 Pittsburgh during the aftermath of the Great Depression, about a family at odds over an heirloom piano engraved by an enslaved ancestor — because of John David.
He was preparing to star in the Broadway revival and writes out his lines as part of his acting process. “I was picking up these pieces of paper with these beautiful monologues and I was like, ‘What is this?’” Malcolm says. “If you read August Wilson, you know in each of his monologues, there’s so many layers of meaning.
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