Seven Guitars

Hailed by the Sun-Times as “on a tear this season,” Resident Artist Ron OJ Parson returns to direct Seven Guitars, August Wilson’s haunting Century Cycle playing about fate, justice, and the Blues.

In the backyard of a Pittsburgh tenement in 1948, six characters gather to mourn the missing seventh: Floyd “Schoolboy” Barton, a blues guitarist with feet of clay who died with fame and celebrity just beyond his reach. Stitched with vibrant swatches of American blues lyrics and harmonized through a seven-piece ensemble, Wilson’s signature voice is at its richest in Seven Guitars as it seeks to explore the disappointingly dissonant harmonies we sometimes find in the circular nature of hope, violence, fate, and justice.