News reports last fall that Michelle Obama's ancestors include not only slaves, but also a white man who fathered her great-great-grandfather under circumstances now unknown renewed public discussion about the complicated legacy of slavery in the United States.

Descendants of Thomas Jefferson have spent more than 150 years denying that he fathered at least four children by his deceased wife's half sister, Sally Hemings, a family slave who was three-quarters white, despite what many researchers describe as convincing proof that he did. For many other Americans the legacy of their 19th-century ancestors—slaves or slaveholders—is also a tangle of black and white.

The Actors Group Hawaii premiere production of “;The Piano Lesson”; explores that tangled legacy through the eye of Pulitzer Prize-winner August Wilson when it opens tonight at the Actors Group Theatre in Chinatown.

The play is the fourth in Wilson's 10-play cycle about the experiences of African-Americans in the 20th century. The year is 1936, and the Charles family is divided over the question of keeping or selling the family piano. Their ties to it go back to pre-Civil War days—two of their ancestors were sold to pay for it. A third member of the family was ordered to carve the faces of the two slaves into the piano, and he carved the entire family history into it as well.

Many years later, another member of the Charles family stole the piano from the white family that formerly owned them. He was killed but the piano was not recovered. Now the dead man's son, Boy Willie, wants to sell the piano and use the money to buy a farm. Boy Willie's sister, Berniece, wants to keep it.

Cast member William Ammons, who plays piano-playing Wining Boy, describes it as “;a great conflict.”;

“;At first people tend to side with Berniece,”; he said. “;But (Boy Willie) has most of the money that he needs to purchase some land that has become available in Mississippi that he wants to farm. He has this line where he says, 'The land gives back to you, but the piano is just sitting there.'

“;He's thinking with his head, (but) Berniece wants to keep the piano for sentimental value.”;

On a personal basis, Ammons can relate to both viewpoints. One of his treasured possessions is a quilt crocheted for him by his grandmother.

“;(She) recently passed—she was 96 in December—and her grandfather was actually a slave, and her father was a blues musician in Mississippi, so there's that connection for me.”;

On the other hand, for a black man in the 1930s, owning a farm was a big step upward from being a sharecropper. Most sharecroppers were perpetually in debt even in good times, and little more than slaves when times were bad.

He added that Wining Boy has a “;vested interest”; in the instrument.

“;He's not a great player,”; Ammons said. “;He's made a couple of records, he's kind of like a legend in his own mind, but he still loves that piano and he has an emotional attachment to it just like Berniece.”;

As for the larger issue of the legacy of slavery in America and the issue of looking back to one's own family tree, Ammons described it all as “;symbolic of how far black people have come.”;

“;We're not far removed from slavery and sharecropping. Both of my parents were born in Mississippi, and when you go down there you still get that sense of what it was like. My grandmother used to tell me stories about that.

“;(Slavery) is part of our history. You can't erase that. It happened, it was real and we've moved on. You can't move on unless you deal with the reality of the past,”; he said.