Pill Hill (play)

Last updated

Pill Hill
Written bySam Kelley
CharactersCharlie, Joe, Al, Tony, Ed, and Scott
Date premiered1990
Place premiered Yale Repertory Theatre
Original languageEnglish
Setting Pill Hill, Chicago 19731983

Pill Hill is a three-act play by American dramatist Sam Kelley. Set in a neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago known informally as Pill Hill, the play examines the failures, successes, and relationships of six African American steel mill workers as they transition from blue-collar jobs to white-collar professions between 1973 and 1983. The play is regarded as an allegory of economic progress related to the American Dream.

Contents

Pill Hill debuted at the 1990 Yale Repertory Theatre Winterfest series of plays in progress, and was subsequently performed in several venues across the United States. [1] [2] [3] The play was published by Dramatic Publishing Company in 1995. [4]

Characters

Plot

Calumet Heights with Pill Hill.png
Pill Hill (red) within the Calumet Heights community area
.

The Pill Hill neighborhood was a popular residence for successful white physicians (resulting in the nickname for the neighborhood). In the 1960s and 1970s, it was a symbol of affluence that represented the American Dream. For young blacks, this symbol was especially poignant, which provides for a subtext in this play. [5]

The three-act play examines the failures, successes, and relationships of six black steel mill workers in Chicago as they transition from blue-collar jobs to the white-collar professions. The time is 1973, 1978, and 1983, and the scene is a Chicago basement apartment where the characters meet to socialize over cards and drinks. Racial themes relating to the disparity of life at the steel mill are presented, and dreams about possibilities represented by the upscale Pill Hill neighborhood in Chicago are examined. The conflicts are painful as the characters deal with leaving the comfortable life of the mill to embark on a road of uncertainty while pursuing professional aspirations. [1] [2] [3] [6]

Performance and publication history

The play debuted in the 1990 Yale Repertory Theatre Winterfest series of plays in progress. It was mounted as a full production in another Connecticut theater, before travelling as productions of the Philadelphia Theatre Company and the Penumbra Theatre Company in St. Paul, Minnesota. The play had a late-1992 production by the Hartford Stage Company, [1] and a 2010 production at Coppin State University. [7] Dramatic Publishing Company published the play on February 23, 1995. [4] The publisher lists it as a full-length drama intended for both high school and college/adult audiences. [6]

Critical reception

John Beer of Time Out Chicago attended a performance in 2009 and wrote, "At its best, Pill Hill draws a corrosive picture of individual lives caught within merciless social systems. Racism haunts the men's periodic get-togethers, most pointedly in a monologue about a Southern excursion gone terribly wrong. [...] [W]riting at the height of the Reagan-Bush years, Kelley saw clearly the impact of right-wing policies on the urban working class." He thought the individuality of the characters was undeveloped, but the play was "neatly structured to a fault". He criticized what he perceived as a "heavy authorial hand" in the repetition of a conversation about one character's self-doubts throughout the play. [2]

Analysis

Pill Hill is an allegory of economic progress told as tales of various pursuits of the American Dream. Kelley uses a spectrum of sociological types that he develops into complex, recognizable personalities in order to deliver his message in natural idioms. [5] When the play was performed in 2005 at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, the website description noted that a good life in Pill Hill was a common goal that was difficult to reach and when achieved, it was at a cost that could be one's soul. [8]

The conflicts range from economic difficulties to the proverbial glass ceiling common to blacks climbing the ladder of success. [6] The changing professional situations coincide with relationship transitions that occurred in America as the hippie generation transformed into the yuppie generation. [6] Four of the six characters become successful by 1983: Al is a real estate dealer, Tony is Mercedes Benz salesman, Ed is a groundbreaking black lawyer and Scott has achieved financial success in a suspicious and mysterious way. The other characters are less successful with Charlie, who is the oldest of the characters, having stayed in the mill without progressing up the ranks, but earning a secure life through hard and dangerous work. Joe's troubles at the mill lead to unemployment and a destiny with the homeless shelter. [3] A 1994 Chicago performance elicited the following character descriptions from the Chicago Reader : Joe is boisterous; Charlie is fatherly; Al is the eternal runner-up; Tony is ingenuously amoral; Scott is innocent and Eddie is the play's "spokesman." [5]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Klein, Alvin (November 22, 1992). "Theater; Life in One Chicago Neighborhood". The New York Times . Retrieved May 10, 2010.
  2. 1 2 3 Beer, John (July 2–8, 2009). "Theater review: Pill Hill". Time Out Chicago. Archived from the original on July 21, 2009. Retrieved May 10, 2010.
  3. 1 2 3 Rawson, Christopher (May 25, 2007). "Stage Review: 'Pill Hill' has highs but lacks bonding". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . Retrieved May 10, 2010.
  4. 1 2 Kelley, Samuel Lawrence (1992). Pill Hill. ISBN   0871294923.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Barnidge, Mary Shen (June 16, 1994). "Pill Hill; Dark Matter". Chicago Reader . Retrieved July 21, 2010.
  6. 1 2 3 4 "Pill Hill". Dramatic Publishing. Archived from the original on January 21, 2013. Retrieved July 20, 2010.
  7. Williams, Shernay (April 1, 2010). "Pill Hill to Culminate Coppin's Theatre Season". Coppin State University. Archived from the original on May 27, 2010. Retrieved July 21, 2010.
  8. "Pill Hill by Sam Kelley". ncattheatre.org. Archived from the original on July 27, 2011. Retrieved July 21, 2010.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Morality play</span> Genre of Medieval and early Tudor drama

The morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor drama. The term is used by scholars of literary and dramatic history to refer to a genre of play texts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries that feature personified concepts alongside angels and demons, who are engaged in a struggle to persuade a protagonist who represents a generic human character toward either good or evil. The common story arc of these plays follows "the temptation, fall and redemption of the protagonist."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Homestead, Pennsylvania</span> Borough in Pennsylvania, United States

Homestead is a borough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. The borough is located in the Monongahela River valley 7 miles (11 km) southeast of downtown Pittsburgh and directly across the river from the city limits. The borough is known for the Homestead Strike of 1892, an important event in the history of labor relations in the United States. The population of Homestead was 2,884 at the 2020 census.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Youngstown, Ohio</span> City in Ohio

Youngstown is the largest city in and county seat of Mahoning County, Ohio, United States. At the 2020 census, it had a population of 60,068, making it the 11th-largest city in Ohio. It is a principal city of the Youngstown–Warren metropolitan area, which had a population of 541,243 in 2020, making it the seventh-largest metro area in Ohio and 107th-largest metro area in the United States. Youngstown is situated on the Mahoning River, 58 miles (93 km) southeast of Cleveland and 61 miles (100 km) northwest of Pittsburgh. In addition to having its own media market, the city is part of the larger Northeast Ohio region. Youngstown is midway between Chicago and New York City via Interstate 80.

<i>Flashdance</i> 1983 American romantic drama film by Adrian Lyne

Flashdance is a 1983 American romantic drama dance film directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Jennifer Beals as a passionate young dancer who aspires to become a professional ballerina (Alex), alongside Michael Nouri playing her boyfriend and the owner of the steel mill where she works by day in Pittsburgh. It was the first collaboration of producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, and the presentation of some sequences in the style of music videos was an influence on other 1980s films including Footloose, Purple Rain, and Top Gun, Simpson and Bruckheimer's most famous production. It was also one of Lyne's first major film releases, building on television commercials. Alex's elaborate dance sequences were shot using body doubles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">August Wilson</span> American playwright (1945–2005)

August Wilson was an American playwright. He has been referred to as the "theater's poet of Black America". He is best known for a series of ten plays, collectively called The Pittsburgh Cycle, which chronicle the experiences and heritage of the African-American community in the 20th century. Plays in the series include Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990), both of which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) and Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988). In 2006, Wilson was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karl Malden</span> American actor (1912–2009)

Karl Malden was an American stage, movie and television American actor who first achieved acclaim in the original Broadway productions of Arthur Miller's All My Sons and Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire in 1946-7. Recreating the role of Mitch in the 1951 film of Streetcar, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

<i>Peer Gynt</i> Five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen

Peer Gynt is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen published in 1867. Written in Norwegian, it is one of the most widely performed Norwegian plays. Ibsen believed Per Gynt, the Norwegian fairy tale on which the play is loosely based, to be rooted in fact, and several of the characters are modelled after Ibsen's own family, notably his parents Knud Ibsen and Marichen Altenburg. He was also generally inspired by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen's collection of Norwegian fairy tales, published in 1845.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uptown, Chicago</span> Community area in Chicago

Uptown is one of Chicago's 77 community areas. Uptown's boundaries are Foster Avenue on the north; Lake Michigan on the east; Montrose, and Irving Park on the south; Ravenswood, and Clark St on the west. To the north is Edgewater, to the west is Lincoln Square, and to the south is Lakeview.

<i>Fences</i> (play) 1985 American drama play

Fences is a 1985 play by American playwright August Wilson. Set in the 1950s, it is the sixth in Wilson's ten-part "Pittsburgh Cycle". Like all of the "Pittsburgh" plays, Fences explores the evolving African-American experience and examines race relations, among other themes. The play won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 1987 Tony Award for Best Play. Fences was first developed at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's 1983 National Playwrights Conference and premiered at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1985.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South Deering, Chicago</span> Community area in Chicago

South Deering, located on Chicago's far South Side, is the largest of the 77 official community areas of that city. Primarily an industrial area, a small residential neighborhood exists in the northeast corner and Lake Calumet takes up a large portion of the area. 80% of the community area is zoned as industrial, natural wetlands, or parks. The remaining 20% is zoned for residential and small-scale commercial uses. It is part of the 10th Ward, once under the control of former Richard J. Daley ally Alderman Edward Vrdolyak.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hegewisch, Chicago</span> Community area in Chicago

Hegewisch is one of the 77 community areas of Chicago, Illinois, located on the city's far south side. It is bordered by the neighborhoods of Riverdale and South Deering to the west, the East Side to the north, the village of Burnham to the south and the city of Hammond, Indiana to the east. The community area is named for Adolph Hegewisch, the president of U.S. Rolling Stock Company who hoped to establish "an ideal workingman's community" when he laid out the town along a rail line in 1883, six years before Chicago annexed the town.

Allan Leigh Lawson is an English actor, director and writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sally Hawkins</span> British actress

Sally Cecilia Hawkins is an English actress who began her career on stage and then moved into film. She has received several awards including a Golden Globe Award in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards and two British Academy Film Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bay View, Milwaukee</span> United States historic place

Bay View is a neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, North America on the shores of Lake Michigan, south of the downtown area and north of the City of St. Francis. Bay View existed as an independent village for eight years, from 1879 to 1887.

John "Johnny" Coppin is an English singer-songwriter, composer, poetry anthologist and broadcaster. He plays guitar and piano and has written and recorded many albums as a solo artist. He has a weekly one-hour show on BBC Radio Gloucestershire entitled, Folk Roots, which he has produced and presented every week since 1996. Coppin has been the Musical Director for the Festival Players since 1992.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Coppin</span> Australian politician

George Selth Coppin was a comic actor, a theatrical entrepreneur, a politician and a philanthropist, active in Australia.

<i>Flowers for Algernon</i> 1959 short story and 1966 novel by Daniel Keyes

Flowers for Algernon is a short story by American author Daniel Keyes, later expanded by him into a novel and subsequently adapted for film and other media. The short story, written in 1958 and first published in the April 1959 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1960. The novel was published in 1966 and was joint winner of that year's Nebula Award for Best Novel.

Samantha Spiro is an English actress and singer. She is best known for portraying Barbara Windsor in the stage play Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick and the television films Cor, Blimey! and Babs, DI Vivien Friend in M.I.T.: Murder Investigation Team, Melessa Tarly in the HBO series Game of Thrones and Maureen Groff in Sex Education. She has won two Laurence Olivier Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pill Hill, Chicago</span> Neighborhood in Calumet Heights, Chicago

Pill Hill is a neighborhood in the Calumet Heights community area on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Knoxville Iron Company</span> United States historic place

The Knoxville Iron Company was an iron production and coal mining company that operated primarily in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, and its vicinity, in the late 19th and 20th centuries. The company was Knoxville's first major post-Civil War manufacturing firm, and played a key role in bringing heavy industry and railroad facilities to the city. The company was also the first to conduct major coal mining operations in the lucrative coalfields of western Anderson County, and helped establish one of Knoxville's first residential neighborhoods, Mechanicsville, in the late 1860s.