Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is not a biopic. It is not written w/the sensibilities of 2020/21. It is the product of the imagination of August Wilson after ruminating from his teenage years to middle age abt the interplay between the Blues and Black culture.

Furthermore, the voices he channels are those of the men he desperately sought guidance from bc August did not have a biological Black male role model. It was the cooks, barbers,musicians,pool players,hustlers and prize fighters from whom he absorbed conversations for his plays.

One of the longest debates abt the work of August Wilson vis a vis Black women. Who he chooses to talk abt or let talk...how much of his mother& sisters feed into his plays, or his wives& the nature of women in the Hill district, not to mention the roll of the Blk Power&the NOI

Also the play was the only one of Wilson's that was not set in Pittsburgh, specifically the Hill district where he grew up.

Viola Davis isn't a bait&switch draw as some have suggested. Much like Laurence Fishburn or Phylicia Rashad &other actors, she has a history of performing&interpreting Wilson's work on the stage&screen. Most notably Tonya in King Hedley II or Rose in the film version of Fences.

The characters operate both as a diversity of opinions as well as personifications of musical instruments&different streams of music in the making of Black America running from Africa to the South to the Great Migration. Its also the battle between creativity&authority