So you've said in a recent interview that you, as the youngest of four, were the family archivist.

It's true.

So how did this role give you a way into the August Wilson story?

So, for one, it's a self-appointed title.

I don't know if anybody else would agree with it.

The baby of the family tends to do that.

Yeah, you gotta stand out.

You know, you gotta stand out in some way.

But I just became super, super interested in our family line. I think maybe because I was the youngest,

I had the least amount of experience with like my grandparents. When they passed, I was really

young. You hear all these stories. And the stories of your family become like lore, they became like, they became

mythical figures, you know?

And obviously in the Black American experience, migration is like a necessary part of that

story.

And so at some point I just was really interested in kind of trying to tie all of these things

together and figure out the connective tissue

and collapse time in that way of these people

that they're not so far removed from you.

They're a part of you too.

And in the midst of that kind of journey,

I read the piano lesson,

and the piano lesson itself is a text that's concerned with that.

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