Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

A Chicago recording studio in 1927 is the whole world of August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, where the Mother of the Blues commands the room while the young trumpeter Levee pushes for a new sound and a place in the band. Chuck Smith directs, billed by Asolo Rep as one of the leading authorities on Wilson, in a production presented with Chicago's Goodman Theatre. The play belongs to Wilson's ten-play cycle chronicling a different decade of African American history, and it is one of several 1927 pieces in a season marking the centennial of the Ringling circus's move to Sarasota. The Mertz Theatre hosts the production.