Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati to Stage August Wilson’s 'How I Learned What I Learned'

This story is featured in CityBeat's Feb. 7 print edition.

Torie Wiggins has become a familiar acting presence with memorable performances at several local theaters, especially Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati (ETC) and Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. (She’s recently been onstage at Cincy Shakes in the central role of Pastor Margaret in James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner.) But she is increasingly taking on the responsibilities of a director, and that’s what’s coming up next at ETC as she stages How I Learned What I Learned, a one-man memoir/monologue written and originally performed by legendary playwright August Wilson. 

Since his death in 2005, this recollection of his youth and development as a writer has been undertaken by ambitious performers at major American and European theaters. For ETC, it will feature “ranney,” the singularly named actor from Texas who has, like Wiggins, turned in admirable work at Cincy Shakes and ETC. (He recently shared the stage with Wiggins in The Amen Corner, and they costarred as Troy and Rose Maxson in August Wilson’s Fences at Cincy Shakes in 2022.) 

In a recent phone conversation with CityBeat, I asked Wiggins how this assignment came her way at ETC, where she recently took on a full-time staff position as an artistic associate with the theater company’s apprentice training program and community outreach, in addition to engaging in various theatrical endeavors. The 2023-2024 season was already underway when her role was established, so she went to Artistic Director Lynn Meyers and asked if she might direct Wilson’s monologue. Meyers said, “I hoped you’d do that.”

A 2002 graduate of the dramatic performance program at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, Wiggins has demonstrated her own acting skill with solo shows at ETC where she was featured as singer and actress Ethel Waters in His Eye Is On The Sparrow (2018), and as the ribald storyteller of Kathy Y. Wilson’s Your Negro Tour Guide (2022), half of a double bill. (She directed the other half of that production, I Shall Not Be Moved, a new script by Isaiah Reaves.) In 2016 she also performed Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 locally with Diogenes Theatre Company. 

Pairing “ranney” with Wiggins for this show is an inspired bit of theater alchemy. He has performed in nine one-man shows on stages across the U.S. as well as productions in Dublin, Ireland and Edinburgh, Scotland. He’s also a writer of poetry, plays, screenplays and songs, so he can certainly resonate with these stories of Wilson, which the esteemed playwright co-conceived with director Todd Kreidler, who staged the work’s original production at Yale Repertory Theatre in 2005.

How I Learned What I Learned is an autobiographical tour-de-force that chronicles Wilson’s days as a high-school dropout at 15 and struggling young writer in the 1960s and 1970s, before the production of his first play, Jitney, in 1982. It includes his first dead-end job as a dishwasher, his first teenage crush, a three-day stint in jail for not paying his rent and his encounters with racism, violence and music. Most of the ten plays in his renowned “Century Cycle,” reflecting African American characters in tales from each decade from 1900 to 2000, are set in Pittsburgh’s lively but impoverished Hill District, an “amalgam of the unwanted,” very much like Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. Wilson evolved from a striving young poet to perhaps America’s most admired playwright, and his growth is sharply presented by this show. According to ETC’s description of Wilson’s script, “this timeless and heartfelt memoir charts one man’s journey of self-discovery and what it means to be a Black artist in America.”

ETC has posted a warning for audiences that How I Learned What I Learned features mature storytelling. August Wilson did not shy away from adult language (including the n-word) and difficult subjects. With serious frankness, he shared how racism, violence, sexual relationships and drug use impacted his life. But according to Wiggins, the portrait is also laced with love and humor, sometimes sardonic but also warm. 

After just finishing her own performance in James Baldwin’s first play at Cincy Shakes, Wiggins says it’s fascinating to compare these powerful writers to one another. (She also played the title role of the jazz singer in Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom at Cincy Shakes in 2022.) A generation apart, Baldwin and Wilson each had a finger on the pulse of Black lives and portrayed them vividly, with vernacular language and tales that reveal both the challenges and the rewards of working creatively in the context of American society. 

Wiggins is reveling in staging a play that provides insight into the elements that converged in Wilson’s writing for the theater, stemming from his eventful if unexpected life. When director Tim Bond staged this monologue for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he wrote, “The stories in How I Learned…are vibrant, humorous, infused with jazz poetry and capture the voice and life force of August like a mesmerizing spell.” 

Even though this compelling monologue was assembled two decades ago, it feels incredibly contemporary. Wilson’s stories still have powerful meaning and provide lessons for a nation where systemic racism continues to be a factor in everyday life. Thanks to Lynn Meyers’s always thoughtful artistic leadership at ETC bringing works like this to her stage and using the impressive talents of Torie Wiggins and “ranney,” we have the opportunity for deep insight into one of America’s greatest playwriting voices.

How I Learned What I Learned opens on Feb. 17 and closes on March 10 at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati. Info: ensemblecincinnati.org.