When Tim Bond was associate artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he experienced a transcendent moment of on-the-job training inside the theater’s famed Bricks Courtyard in the early 2000s.
It was there that August Wilson wanted to chat with him about a new play he had written, a conversation that left Bond mesmerized at every word uttered by one of the greatest playwrights in American theater history. As Bond recalls it, Wilson wasn’t so much describing a play he was writing but speaking about something he had witnessed.
That new work was “Gem of the Ocean,” the ninth of 10 plays Wilson wrote in his American Century Cycle, and the first in chronological order.
“My mouth was probably wide open hearing the description of the play, and when he finished, he asked, ‘So what do you say?’ ” said Bond, who chuckled at the memory during a recent interview with The Chronicle. “It was such an incredible privilege inside the mind of a genius — how he had woven these lyrical and extraordinary tales that take place in different decades in the 20th century. I was just transported.”
Bond worked in Ashland, Ore., for 11 years beginning in 1996 and directed “Gem” there in 2007. In the years since, he has undoubtedly revisited that conversation, especially since being named the TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s artistic director in March 2020.
Now, after many fits and starts due to the pandemic, Bond is finally getting a chance to make his directorial debut with TheatreWorks Silicon Valley when the company’s production of “Gem of the Ocean” opens Wednesday, April 6, at the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts.
When COVID-19 interrupted the company’s 51st season, Bond chose “Gem” for a few reasons. First, it is one of his favorite plays of all time. But it was also a chance to have a play respond to the history of police violence against the Black community, particularly in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police.
“This is an important time to remember our history, to take stock of what still hasn’t changed, to say that Black Lives Matter, to seek healing and redemption for a nation that has lived a big lie since its inception, and to pass the mantle of courage, hope and human rights to the next generation,” he said.
The play’s narrative revolves around Aunt Ester, the 285-year-old matriarch and cleanser of souls, who lives in Pittsburgh’s Hill District in 1904. She welcomes into her home the former slave Solly Two Kings and young Alabaman Citizen Barlow, a man searching for redemption and one who is ultimately led on a spiritual journey to the City of Bones.
Bond’s passion for the play is evident in rehearsals at the company’s Redwood City studios. As actors tighten their staging, Bond is laser focused, literally seated on the edge of his chair every moment. And when he shares his typical erudite insights into the play’s geometry, its minutiae, his voice modulates with precision and texture, leaving the cast rapt.
Bond also proves adept at communicating the thrill of creating theater, punctuating the end of a scene with an expressive “Woo!” as the cast nails a particularly hard piece of blocking. When an actor breaks character and makes a joke that sends the serious room into a fit of laughter, he’s miffed, yet delighted.
One fan of Bond’s debut production is Constanza Romero, Wilson’s widow and executive director of August Wilson Legacy LLC. Romero, who graduated from UC Santa Cruz before moving on to the Yale School of Drama, met her future husband while costuming a production of his play “The Piano Lesson.” Since his death, in 2005 at age 60 of liver cancer, Romero has been committed to keeping Wilson’s work alive on stage. As time goes on, Wilson’s work may speak to a specific era, but his ideas have proved eternal, she said.
“August spoke so much about the injustices of the world, the suffering, the fact that the struggle for equality continues,” Romero said. “I don’t think in any of his plays does he say, ‘We’ve arrived.’ It’s those senses of self-empowerment and continuing the fight that he brings onto the stage.”
Wilson’s ideas reach an audience in a cadence that is wholly pleasing to the ear. In addition to the richness of his incredibly memorable characters, there is a melodious luminosity to his vernacular that suggests a universe full of adversity and joy.
“His language is so complex, so lyrical and poetic,” said Bond, who has directed seven of the 10 plays in Wilson’s cycle. “The metaphors inside of that language are profound, and you have to find the rhythms in each one. Like jazz, they have to feel improvisational, but like the blues they have to land like a lyric and feel naturalistic and realistic. It’s an extraordinary thing he’s done.”
Bond is also working on “How I Learned What I Learned,” Wilson’s theatrical memoir written for a solo actor. The show is slated to run, fittingly, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival beginning in May, which has allowed Bond and Romero to continue their longtime collaboration and friendship.
The opportunity to sit in a rehearsal room listening to her husband’s words is one thing that continues to strengthen Romero’s resolve in caring for his work.
“It’s been an amazing experience to take care of his literary legacy, because I hear him in every single word,” Romero said. “There was a lot of life left in him, and in a way, I’m trying to pay homage to him with the work I do, but also experience things through his eyes.”
Wilson’s plays “talk about duty, honor and freedom. What do these things mean in our lives? How do we succeed?” Bond said. “These are human questions seen through the lens of the Black experience. It unfolds a world and talks about an entire country in America through that century. That will resonate with us for a long time.”
“Gem of the Ocean”:Written by August Wilson. Directed by Tim Bond. April 6-May 1. $25-$95. Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View. 877-662-8978.theatreworks.org