Playgoer’s guide to

by August Wilson
Directed by Seret Scott

Barbara & Bill Roberts, Honorary Producers

Prepared by Kelly L. Miller

Production Dramaturg & Literary Manager
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part I: THE PLAY

Part II: THE PLAYWRIGHT

Part III: THE PRODUCTION

Part IV: CONTEXT FOR THE PLAY

Part V: RESOURCES
 Part I: THE PLAY
Wilson Play Like Listening to the Blues
by Linda Sullivan Baity

T
roy Maxson has
spent his entire
life trapped
behind fences he
cannot scale. He
is a man at once proud
and humiliated, hopeful
and disillusioned,
passionate and yet
powerless to surmount
the obstacles of racial
prejudice, prison bars,
family obligations and
self-imposed emotional
walls that block his way
at every turn.
This middle-
aged African-American
garbage collector and
legendary ex-player
in the Negro baseball
league is the beating
heart of August Wilson’s
masterwork, Fences. As the drama’s compelling central character, Troy Maxson (a character loosely based on the
playwright’s own stepfather) also embodies the inequalities and injustices confronting black Americans throughout
the painful course of modern history.
Fences is set in 1957, in the small dirt front yard of the Maxson household, “an ancient two-story brick house
set back off a small alley” in Pittsburgh’s impoverished inner-city Hill District. The play opens with Troy and his
friend Bono rehashing a recent incident at work when Troy made trouble by complaining that only whites were
allowed to drive the garbage trucks. A s the stories begin to unfold and family members are added to the mix,
including Troy’s wife, Rose, sons Cory and Lyons, and brother Gabriel, Maxson emerges as a seriously flawed, yet
in many ways admirable, hero whose compelling personal struggle transcends the boundaries of race and time to
exemplify the universal human yearning for dignity, acceptance and love in the face of seemingly insurmountable
barricades.
Shortly after completing Fences in 1985, Wilson began to see that the three dramas he had written to date
were actually the beginnings of an epic literary achievement that grew to include ten plays and is often dubbed the
Century Cycle. As the ambitious project developed, Wilson began to deliberately weave his plays together with
overlapping themes and characters. He told The New York Times in 2000, “I wanted to place this culture onstage in
all its richness and fullness and to demonstrate its ability to sustain us in all areas of human life and endeavor and
through profound moments of our history in which the larger society had thought less of us than we have thought
of ourselves.”
Each of the ten plays is set in a different decade of the 20th century, and all but one take place in the
Hill District of Pittsburgh, where Wilson was born in 1945. In his introduction to the recently published August
Wilson Century Cycle, critic John Lahr focuses on the playwright’s talent for transforming “historical tragedy into
imaginative triumph. The blues are catastrophe expressed lyrically; so are Wilson’s plays, which swing with the
pulse of the African-American people, as they moved, over the decades, from property to personhood.”
In decade order, Wilson’s “Century Cycle” plays are:
 • 1900s - Gem of the Ocean (written 2003)
• 1910s - Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (written 1984)
• 1920s - Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (written 1982)
• 1930s - The Piano Lesson - Pulitzer Prize (written 1986)
• 1940s - Seven Guitars (written 1995)
• 1950s - Fences - Pulitzer Prize (written 1985)
• 1960s - Two Trains Running (written 1990)
• 1970s - Jitney (written 1982)
• 1980s - King Hedley II (written 2001)
• 1990s - Radio Golf (written 2005)

Fences was initially presented as a staged reading at The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s 1983 National
Playwrights Conference. It opened on April 30, 1985, at the Yale Repertory Theatre in a production directed
by Lloyd Richards, and the following year, the Richards-helmed Broadway premiere won every major accolade,
including the Tony Award for Best Play, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, the John Gassner Outer Critics’
Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. That production, which featured James Earl Jones as Troy Maxson,
ran for 525 performances and set a record for a non-musical Broadway production by grossing $11 million in a
single year.
SCR’s dazzling cast for Fences features Charlie Robinson (Troy Maxson), Gregg Daniel (Jim Bono), Juanita
Jennings (Rose), Brandon J. Dirden (Lyons), Baron Kelly (Gabriel), Larry Bates (Cory), Skye Whitebear and Sofya
Ogunseitan (alternating as Raynell). Joining director Seret Scott’s creative ensemble are Set Designer Shawn Motley,
Costume Designer Dana Woods, Lighting Designer Lonnie Alcaraz and Sound Designer Michael Roth.
Previews for Fences begin January 22nd and performances continue through February 21st on Segerstrom
Stage. Theatre Discovery Project performances on January 26, 27, 28, February 2, 3, and 4 feature standards-based
activities designed to enhance the educational value for students. As space is limited for these special events,
interested teachers should contact the Box Office (714.708.5555) for group reservations.
Fences Extended Family
TROY MAXSON - Charlie Robinson
Legendary Negro League Baseball player, now working as a garbage collector. Troy is a storyteller. He is at
once jovial and loving, brash and overbearing. A complicated man embittered by the racism he has experienced
throughout his life.

JIM BONO - Gregg Daniel

Troy’s very good friend. The men met while in prison, and Bono, as he is known, has stayed with Troy through his
legendary days in baseball and today works beside him as a garbage man. Like brothers, the two men love each
other deeply.

ROSE - Juanita Jennings

Troy’s wife. A strong, supportive woman who is fiercely protective of her husband and son. A loving presence
who counterbalances Troy’s ferocity for life, Rose mothers almost everyone around her. She is quiet and laughs
easily. A gentle spirit.

LYONS - Brandon J. Dirden

Troy’s eldest son from
a previous relationship.
Lyons is a musician who
cannot seem to keep a
job. He is full of laughter
and uses his charming
personality to quell his
father’s quick anger. A
grown man, he lives with
his girlfriend nearby.

GABRIEL - Baron Kelly

Troy’s brother. After
suffering severe head
trauma in World War
II, Gabriel is left with a
childlike innocence and
a deep sense of concern
for his older brother. He
believes with every fiber
in his being that he is the
archangel Gabriel.

CORY - Larry Bates

Troy and Rose’s son. Cory is a natural athlete like his father, eager to prove his salt to the legendary Troy
Maxon. He has been playing football, hoping to catch the eyes of college recruiters, offering him the educational
opportunities his illiterate father never had.

RAYNELL - Skye Whitebear and Sofya Ogunseitan

Troy’s daughter and youngest child from another relationship.

Character description reprinted from the excellent Fences Study Guide published by Penumbra Theatre Company in
2008
Wilson’s Introduction to Fences

When the sins of our fathers visit us

We do not have to play host.
We can banish them with forgiveness
As God, in his Largeness and Laws.
–August Wilson

N
ear the turn of the century, the destitute of Europe August Wilson in front of his boyhood home
sprang on the city with tenacious claws and an (far right) on Bedford Street in Pittsburgh,
honest and solid dream. The city devoured them. November 18, 1999. (Pittsburgh Post
Gazette)
They swelled its belly until it burst into a thousand
furnaces and sewing machines, a thousand butcher shops
and bakers’ ovens, a thousand churches and hospitals
and funeral parlors and moneylenders. The city grew. It
nourished itself and offered each man a partnership limited
only by his talent, his guile, and his willingness and capacity
for hard work. For the immigrants of Europe, a dream
dared and won true.
The descendants of African slaves were offered
no such welcome or participation. They came from
places called the Carolinas and the Virginias, Georgia,
Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. They came strong,
eager, searching. The city rejected them, and they fled
and settled along the riverbanks and under bridges
in shallow, ramshackle houses made of sticks and tar-
paper. They collected rags and wood. They sold the use Playwright Tony Kushner paid trib-
of their muscles and their bodies. They cleaned houses ute to Wilson after his death, call-
and washed clothes, they shined shoes, and in quiet ing him “a giant figure in American
desperation and vengeful pride, they stole and lived in theatre... He asserted the power
pursuit of their own dream: That they could breathe free, of drama to describe large social
finally, and stand to meet life with the force of dignity and forces, to explore the meaning of
whatever eloquence the heart could call upon. an entire people’s experience in
By 1957, the hard-won victories of the European American history,” Kushner said in
immigrants had solidified the industrial might of America. the New York Times. “For all the
War had been confronted and won with new energies that magic in his plays, he was writing
used loyalty and patriotism as its fuel. Life was rich, full, in the grand tradition of Eugene
and flourishing. The Milwaukee Braves won the World O’Neill and Arthur Miller, the politi-
Series, and the hot winds of change that would make the cally engaged, direct, social realist
sixties a turbulent, racing, dangerous, and provocative drama. He was reclaiming ground
decade had not yet begun to blow full. for the theater that most people
– August Wilson’s introduction to Fences thought had been abandoned.”
Synopsis: A Scene by Scene Breakdown
Act I
Scene 1: Friday night
Scene 2: The next morning
Scene 3: A few hours later
Scene 4: Friday, two weeks later

Act II
Scene 1: The following morning
Scene 2: Six months later, early afternoon
Scene 3: Late evening, three days later
Scene 4: Two months later
Scene 5: Eight years later, morning

Setting
(as written by the playwright)

The Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1957

The setting is the yard which fronts the only entrance to the Maxon household, an ancient two-story brick house set
back off a small alley in a big-city neighborhood. The entrance to the house is gained by two or three steps lead-
ing to a wooden porch badly in need of paint. A relatively recent addition to the house and running its full width,
the porch lacks congruence. It is a sturdy porch with a flat roof. One or two chairs of dubious value sit at one end
where the kitchen window opens onto the porch. An old fashioned icebox stands silent guard and opposite end.

The yard is a small dirt yard, partially fenced (except during the last scene), with a wooden sawhorse, a pile of lum-
ber, and other fence-building equipment off to the side. Opposite is a tree from which hangs a ball made of rags.
A baseball bat leans against the tree. Two oil drums serve as garbage receptacles and sit near the house at right to
complete the setting.

Set rendering by Shaun Motley.

Fences at South Coast Repertory,
February 2010.
 PART II: THE PLAYWRIGHT
August Wilson - A Short Biography

A
ugust Wilson was born Frederick August Kittel
on April 27, 1945, to Daisy Wilson and Fred-
erick Kittel, a white baker who had emigrated
from Germany to Pittsburgh. The fourth of
Daisy Wilson’s six children, he changed his
name to August Wilson after his father’s death in
1965. The family lived in “the Hill,” the Pittsburgh
neighborhood that later provided the setting for most
of his plays. Wilson quit school as a teenager, after
a teacher wrongfully accused him of plagiarism, and
educated himself in Pittsburgh’s libraries, where he
read such esteemed writers as Richard Wright, Langs-
ton Hughes and Ralph Ellison.
Wilson began his writing career as a poet, influ-
enced largely by the writings of political poet and
playwright Amiri Baraka. His political interests led
him to become involved in theater in the late 1960s
as a co-founder of Black Horizons, a Pittsburgh com- THE HILL DISTRICT: Above, A group of men and women dining at the lunch counter of the B & M
Restaurant in the lower Hill. Below left, A group of people boarding the 85 Bedford Trolley at the
munity theater. In 1978, he moved to Minnesota and corner of Centre and Herron Avenues in the Hill District. Below right, Woogie Harris playing on a mir-
soon received a fellowship from the Minneapolis Play- rored piano in Crawford Grill, a popular club which hosted local and nationally renowned musicians.
wrights Center. Photos by Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris.
In 1981, St. Paul’s Penumbra Theatre staged his
first play, Black Bart and the Sacred Hills, a satirical
western adapted from an earlier series of poems. In 1982, after several unsuccessful submissions, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
was accepted for a workshop by the National Playwrights Conference of the O’Neill Theatre Center in Connecticut, inaugurat-
ing Wilson’s association with director Lloyd Richards, the head of the Playwrights Conference. Richards would direct the first
five plays in Wilson’s 10-play cycle chronicling the experiences of African Americans throughout the 20th century. The winner
of Rockefeller and Guggenheim fellowships, a Drama Desk Award, two Pulitzer Prizes and four New York Drama Critics’ Circle
Awards, Wilson would become one of the late 20th century’s most acclaimed playwrights over the next two decades.
In August 2005, Wilson shocked the theater world when he announced that he had inoperable liver cancer. The play-
wright died on October 2, 2005, a little more than six months after Radio Golf, the last play in the cycle to be written and
produced, was premiered.
The Pittsburgh Cycle
by Christopher Rawson

T
he ten plays with which August Wilson conquered the American theater are sometimes called his Century
Cycle, since each is set in a different decade of the twentieth century. But they are better called the Pittsburgh
cycle, since mine are set in a square mile or so of that city’s Hill District and all ten are rich with the voices
and places, stories and passions that Wilson absorbed in the years that he spent walking its streets and
listening to the talk in its diners, barbershops, numbers joints, and jitney stations. The Hill is an active
character in the cycle, as well as a literal crossroads and a metaphoric microcosm of black America.
By 1904, the real Hill District had become a multiethnic melting pot. Roughly one-third black, one-third
Eastern European Jews, and one-third everything else, it grew to hold some fifty-five thousand people. For blacks,
who weren’t always welcome in the adjacent downtown, it was a city within a city, its commerce and entertainment
spiced with music (a dozen native jazz greats), sports (baseball’s Josh Gibson and the Negro National League teams
the Crawfords and the Grays), and journalism (the Pittsburgh Courier, once the nation’s largest black newspaper,
with nationwide circulation).
But at mid-century the aging Hill was torn apart by urban renewal, followed by the fires that protested
the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Wilson, who was born in 1945, witnessed this decline. He had
dropped out of school at fifteen after bouts with racism, then educated himself at the Carnegie Library before doing
his graduate studies in culture and politics on the streets of the Hill. By the time he moved to St. Paul., Minn., in
1978, the Hill was broken, its population having shrunk to less than fifteen thousand. In recent years it has started
to come back. But, as if in cosmic compensation for history’s cruelty, it already lives in Wilson’s art.
The result is that
we now speak of August
Wilson’s Hill, a gritty urban
landscape transformed by art
into something mythic, like
Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha
County or Friel’s Ballybeg.
Writing from the distance
of St. Paul and later Seattle,
Wilson said that he heard
more clearly the voices from
the street corners and cigar
stores of his youth. And
he kept coming back to
Pittsburgh to dip the ladle
of his art into this crucible
of memory and inspiration,
using history much as
Shakespeare did—as raw
material to mold and shape.
The outcome is stories rich in
the “love, honor, duty, and
betrayal” that he has said are
at the heart of all his plays.
Along the way, Hill
names, shops, streets, and
even addresses are adapted,
hinted at, or disguised. First
comes 1727 Bedford Avenue,
where Wilson lived with his
family in two back rooms,
later four, until he was
thirteen—a family that grew
to include six children. His
memories of the gossip and the card playing in that backyard mark it as the setting for Seven Guitars. In front was
Bela’s Market, run by Eastern European Jews, and next door was the watch and shoe-repair shop of Italian brothers,
making the two houses an epitome of the early-mid-century Hill.
Working on the 1999 premier, in Pittsburgh, of King Hedley II, Wilson identified its setting with the backyard
of his mother’s final house, just down Bedford. For the cycle’s other backyard play, Fences, the best guess is that it
takes place across Bedford, at the house of the retired fighter Charlie Burley, who offers a close historical model for
Troy Maxson.
The cycle’s second most important
location is 1839 Wylie Avenue, the faded
mansion that is home to Aunt Ester, the seer
supposedly born in 1619, when the first
African slaves reached Virginia. In Gem of the
Ocean, Aunt Ester’s house serves as a modern
station on the Underground Railroad of black
empowerment, and in Radio Golf it is central
to the conflict between that past and the black
middle class. Today 1839 Wylie Avenue is
a grassy vacant lot with an impressive view.
Whether or not a mansion ever stood there, it
is both real and fictional: Wilson actually chose
1839 because it was the year of the famous
Centre Avenue with and Chas. W. Lutz Choice Meats on Amistad slave-ship revolt.
left, with Crawford Grill no. 2 on Wylie Avenue, in back- The three Hill plays set in public spaces
ground, July 1957. Photo by Charles “Teenie” Harris.
are naturally located in the business district
on Wylie and Centre Avenues. In Two Trains
Running, Memphis’s Diner is near Eddie’s Diner, Lutz’s Meat Market (which still stands on Centre), and the West
Funeral Home. The diner’s address is later given as 1621 Wylie Avenue, many blocks away, but that number is just
a tribute to the Bedford address where Wilson’s mother died.
The most specific location belongs to Jitney, which is set in the existing jitney (gypsy cab) station at the
corner of Wylie Avenue and Erin Street which still has the same phone number used in the play. Less specific is
Radio Golf, set in a storefront office somewhere on Centre Avenue. For The Piano Lesson, the only clue is that
Berniece and Avery take Maretha on a streetcar and drop her off at the Irene Kaufman Settlement House on their
way downtown so their house must be east of there.
As for Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, since the
Hill slopes down toward the southwest, references
to “up on Bedford” and “down on Wylie” suggest
that the Holly boarding house is between them, on
Webster Avenue. cThis squares with the view of
Loomis standing “up there on the corner watching
the house…right up there on Manilla Street.”
Wilson’s only play not set on the Hill is Ma
Rainey’s Black Bottom, his first to reach Broadway.
He later said that he hadn’t set the play on the Hill
wbecause, being from Pittsburgh, he didn’t think it
sounded important enough. He soon realized that
Pittsburgh could stand for all America. He was often
furious with Pittsburgh, of course, an anger that
came from its streets, along with hope. But all is
transformed when Wilson welds comedy and tragedy Exterior of Eddie’s Restaurant.
to speak with prophetic passion across the American Photo by Charles “Teenie” Harris.
racial divide.

Reprinted with the kind permission of the author. Christopher Rawson is chair of the American Theatre Critics Association and
serves on the boards of the Theatre Hall of Fame and the Best Plays Theater Yearbook. Now senior theater critic for the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette, he has reviewed, interviewed, and chronicled August Wilson since 1984. Some of the Post-Gazette’s extensive Wilson
coverage is available at www.post-gazette.com/theater.
August Wilson’s Century - The Ten-Play Cycle
• 1988 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for
GEM OF THE OCEAN Best Play
(set in 1904; completed in 2004)
Bewildered by the collapse of the old slave regime, MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM
the first generation of black Americans recently (set in 1927; completed in 1984)
freed from slavery are unprepared for the backlash The only play in the cycle that takes place outside
against their newly acquired freedom by whites and of Pittsburgh, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom delves
head north. Aunt Ester, the drama’s 287-year-old into the sultry and dangerous 1920s blues scene
fiery matriarch, welcomes into her home Solly Two in Chicago. Ma Rainey was a renowned vocalist,
Kings, who was born into slavery and scouted for famous for her deep and forthright interpretation
the Union Army, and Citizen Barlow, a young man of the blues. When Levee, a man deeply scarred by
from Alabama searching for a new life. the harassment and dismissal of his worth by white
society, strays from the group to reach for a solo
JOE TURNER’S COME AND GONE career, the magic of the band is broken.
(set in 1911; completed in 1988) • 1985 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for
Haunted by seven years on a chain gang, Herald Best American Play
Loomis appears in Pittsburgh to reunite his family.
Surrounded by the vibrant tenants of a black THE PIANO LESSON
boarding house, he fights for his soul and his song (set in 1936; completed in 1990)
in the dawning days of a century without slavery. Produced at SCR in 1999, The Piano Lesson is set in
the house of a family of African-Americans who have
migrated from Mississippi. The conflict centers on
a piano that was once traded by the family’s white
master for two of the family’s ancestors. Siblings
Boy Willie and Berniece argue about the literal and
symbolic worth of the piano and whether or not to
sell it.
• 1990 Drama Desk Award Outstanding New Play
• 1990 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for
Best Play
• 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
• 1996 Peabody Award

SEVEN GUITARS
(set in 1948; completed in 1996)
This story of blues guitarist Floyd “Schoolboy”
Barton unravels in flashback after his untimely death.
In the time since recording his first album, Floyd
has squandered all his money, left his girlfriend
for another woman, was left by the other woman,
pawned his guitar, and spent time in jail after being
arrested while walking home from his mother’s
funeral. Floyd’s second chance at success beckons
and inspires hope until his life is cut tragically short.
• 1996 New York Drama
Critics’ Circle Award
for Best Play

FENCES
(set in 1957; completed in 1987)
Baseball makes sense to Troy Maxson; a man gets
three strikes and he’s out. In this most American of
 to get it. No one knows quite what Memphis has
been through, but all soon realize that this is his
most important stand.

JITNEY
(set in 1977; first written in 1979; rewritten
and expanded in 2000)
Eager to gentrify the neighborhood, the city
threatens to level a makeshift taxi dispatch office
that has served as a community gathering place
for years. As he tries to stave off the city, the
owner of the cab company faces his own inner
struggle. After a twenty-year stint in prison for
murder, his son is returning home. Jitney tells
the story of a generation recognizing its mortality
while the next must face its responsibility.
• 2001 Outer Critics Circle Award for
Outstanding Off-Broadway Play
• 2002 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New
Play (London)

KING HEDLEY II
(set in 1985; completed in 2001)
Described as one of Wilson’s darkest plays, King
Hedley II centers on King, the son of Hedley
and Ruby from Seven Guitars. We meet King
as a grown man in 1980’s Pittsburgh, fighting to
survive a life that seems never to look bright.
King is an ex-con; he’s trying to save $10,000 by
selling stolen refrigerators so that he can buy a
video store.

RADIO GOLF
(set in 1997; completed
pastimes, Troy has found an opportunity in 2005)
to play by the rules and win. When his Wilson’s cycle comes
rapid rise through the Negro leagues hits full circle as Aunt Ester’s
the ceiling of racial prejudice, however, one-time home at 1839
Troy is forced to let go of his dream of Wylie Avenue in Gem of
major league success. the Ocean is slated for
• 1987 Drama Desk Award demolition to make way
for Best New Play for a slick new real estate
• 1987 New York Drama Critics’ Circle venture aimed to boost
Best Play both the depressed Hill
• 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Drama District and Harmond
• 1987 Tony Award for Best Play Wilks’ chance of becoming
the city’s first black mayor.
TWO TRAINS RUNNING Radio Golf is a play in
(set in 1969; completed in 1992) which history, memory and
Memphis is hardly making a large profit legacy challenge notions of
with his modest diner, but the place progress and country club
has long sustained a small community ideals.
of folks in Pittsburgh’s Hill District.
Developers have come for the building that houses • 2007 New York Drama Critics Circle Award
Memphis’ diner. He vows to make the city give him a for Best Play
fair price for his diner and is willing to go through fire
 PART III: THE PRODUCTION
Director Seret Scott returns to SCR to direct Fences, after directing The Piano Lesson here in 1999.

The Cast (photos and bios in program)

Troy Maxson.................................. Charlie Robinson

Jim Bono.............................................. Gregg Daniel
Rose..................................................Juanita Jennings
Lyons...........................................Brandon J. Dirden
Gabriel....................................................Baron Kelly
Cory.......................................................... Larry Bates

The Creative Team (bios in program)

Director..................................................... Seret Scott

Scenic Design......................................Shaun Motley
Costume Design.................... Dana Rebecca Woods
Lighting Design............................... Peter Maradudin
Sound Design.........................................Jim Ragland
Fight Director......................................... Ken Merckx
Stage Manager................................Jamie A. Tucker

Dramaturg.......................................... Kelly L. Miller

Set rendering by Shaun Motley.

Fences at South Coast Repertory,
February 2010.
 PART IV: CONTEXT FOR THE PLAY
History of 1957
With Fences, August Wilson takes us to 1957 — a seminal year in black American
history with events across the nation that presaged the coming civil rights era.
Here’s a look at major events in that year:

“Stand up for justice,” Martin

Luther King, Jr. told the crowd at the
Lincoln Memorial on May 17. King was
at the time known mainly for his role in
the Montgomery bus boycott. He spoke
many times that year, but his “Give Us
the Ballot” speech was perhaps the
most influential as he asked members
of Congress to ensure the voting rights
of African-Americans. To his fellow activists, he said: “I realize that it will
cause restless nights sometime. It might cause losing a job; it will cause
suffering and sacrifice. It might even cause physical death for some. But
if physical death is the price that some must pay to free their children from a permanent life of psychological death,
then nothing can be more Christian.”
On September 9th, President Eisenhower signed the bill King and many others had fought to pass. The Civil
Rights Act of 1957 was the first bill of its kind since 1875. Vice President Richard Nixon wrote in a letter to King: “My
only regret is that I have been unable to do more than I have. Progress is understandably slow in this field, but we
at least can be sure that we are moving steadily and surely ahead.” Though the act’s effectiveness had been limited
by an amendment inserted by Southern senators, which required a local
jury trial for any offenders of the law, the bill set off a wave of stronger
legislation in the sessions to follow.
Later that same month, nine students desegregated Little Rock’s
Central High School, an act ordered three years earlier when the Supreme
Court decided Brown vs. Board of Education. Riots broke out in the
weeks that followed, including on September 23rd. That same day, a
home run hit by Milwaukee Braves’ player Hank Aaron clinched the team
their first pennant title in franchise history. Aaron quotes a Wisconsin’s
CIO News in his autobiography: “Milwaukee’s dusky Hank Aaron blasted
the Braves into the World Series only a few hours after an insane mob of
white supremacists took the Stars and Stripes in Little Rock and tramped
it to the ground in front of Central High
School…The cheers that are lifted to
Negro ballplayers only dramatize the stupidity of the jeers that are directed at those
few Negro kids trying to get a good education for themselves in Little Rock.”
The year 1957 is remembered now as a landmark on the journey toward
civil rights, but Wilson reminds us in Fences how often the effects were little felt by
average citizens. He approached writing a history of African-American experience
by examining the culture, rather than the events of an era. “I listen to the music of
the particular period that I’m working on,” Wilson has said of his process. “Inside
the music are clues to what is happening with the people.” In the 1950s, that music
was the blues, a foundation of Wilson’s playwriting. “[The blues] is the greatest
source of my inspiration,” he says. “I see the blues as the cultural response of black
America to the world that they found themselves in, and contained within the blues
are the ideas and attitudes of the culture.”
- Excerpted from Hard Success: A Closer Look at 1957 by Charles Haugland,
Huntington Theatre Company
In Another League

T
he Negro League baseball teams of the mid-20th century were created in response to an 1884 “gentlemen’s”
agreement that kept African American players from competing in the Major and minor leagues in America.
In 1920, Rube Foster, star pitcher, manager and owner of the Chicago American Giants, combined eight
leading black teams from around the Midwest into
the Negro National League. Over the next 40 years, and
through three more segregated major leagues — a second
Negro National League, the Eastern Colored League and
the Negro American League — teams maintained a high
level of professional skill and became centerpieces for
economic development in many black communities.
In 1945, Major League Baseball’s Brooklyn Dodgers
recruited Jackie Robinson from the Kansas City Monarchs.
Robinson became the first African-American in the mod-
ern era to play on a Major League roster. While this his-
toric event was a key moment in baseball and civil rights
history, it hastened the decline of the Negro Leagues. Above, The Homestead Grays won nine consecutive league pennants from 1937-45. The
The best black players were now recruited for the Major Pittsburgh Crawfords, below, were one of the most formidable teams of the mid-1930s.
Leagues, and black fans followed. The last Negro Leagues Center, Josh Gibson, known as the black Babe Ruth, one of the greatest players kept from
the major leagues by the unwritten rule (enforced until the year of his death) against
teams folded in the early 1960s.
hiring black ballplayers. Gibson played
By the 1930s, Pittsburgh had become home to the as a catcher for the Pittsburgh Crawfords
second Negro National League and the only city in the (1927-29 and 1932-36) and the Home-
country with two black professional teams, the Home- stead Grays (1930-31 and 193-46).
stead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords. Gibson was elected to the Baseball Hall of
Fame in 1972.

HOMESTEAD GRAYS
Located first in a small steel town outside of Pittsburgh, the Grays dominated the East-
ern baseball scene. They were led by future Hall of Famers Josh Gibson (catcher),
“Cool” Papa Bell (outfield), Judy Johnson (third base), Buck Leonard (first base) and
Cuban great Martin Dihigo (second base, pitcher, outfielder). Their ace pitcher was
“Smokey” Joe Williams, who once struck out 27 batters in a 12-inning game.
During World War II, the Grays played their home games at both Forbes Field
(Pittsburgh) and Griffith
Stadium (Washington,
D.C.) when the white Ma-
jor League clubs were on
the road. The Grays tra-
ditionally outdrew their
white counterparts, the
cellar-dwelling Washington Senators.

PITTSBURGH CRAWFORDS
Originally, the Pittsburgh Crawfords team was composed
of amateurs from the sandlots of the city’s Hill District,
but by the early 1930s, the team fielded some of the
strongest lineups in baseball history. They won the 1935 Negro National League championship with five future Hall of
Famers: James “Cool Papa” Bell, Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, Judy Johnson and the legendary Satchel Paige.
Owned by Pittsburgh gambling and numbers racketeer Gus Greenlee, the Crawfords was the best financed team
in black baseball during its early years. Revenue generated from his “business” operations allowed Greenlee to sign
black baseball’s biggest names. It also enabled him to build his own ballpark, Gus Greenlee Field, in Pittsburgh’s Hill
District.

- Portions of the article are excerpted from the Pittsburgh Pirates’ website and NegroLeagueBaseball.com
Wilson, in His Own Words
Wilson, on the play:
“In Fences they see a garbage man, a person
they don’t really look at, although they may see
a garbage man every day.... This black garbage
man’s life is very similar to their own, he is
affected by the same things — love, honor,
beauty, betrayal, duty.”

Wilson, on how he began writing the play:

“Fences actually started with Troy standing in
the yard with the baby in his arms, and the first
line I wrote was ‘I’m standing out here in the
yard with my daughter in my arms. She’s just a
wee bitty little ole thing. She don’t understand
about grownups’ business, and she ain’t got no
mama.’ I didn’t know who he was talking to. I
said, ‘O.K., he’s talking to his wife.’ O.K., why
is he telling her this?”

“I thought, ‘I can write one of those plays

where you have a big character and everything revolves around him….In Fences I wanted to show Troy as very
responsible. He did not leave. He held a job. He fathered three kids by three different women, due to the
circumstances of his life, and he was responsible toward all of them.”

Wilson, on the character of Troy Maxson:

“I think what impressed me most about Troy was his willingness to engage life, to live it zestfully and fully despite
the particulars of his past, despite the way his mother abandoned him, the way he was put out of the house by his
father at fourteen, the way he spent fifteen years in the penitentiary
— none of that broke his spirit.”

Wilson, on a writing exercise he used with playwriting students:

“I ask them to invent a painting and then describe it. That word-painting becomes the set description, but they
don’t know it.... I ask the students what the people in their paintings say and how they talk, and gradually they
see that characters characterize themselves through their speech.” NOTE: Several of Wilson’s own plays found their
origins in works of visual art; Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and The Piano Lesson were both inspired by Romare
Bearden’s collages. In the case of Fences, Wilson reflected on a Bearden 1969 work titled “Continuities.”

Wilson, on his writing process:

“I generally start with a line of dialogue. Someone says something and they’re talking to someone else. I don’t
always know who’s talking or who they’re talking to, but you take the line of dialogue and it starts from there…the
more the characters talk the more you know about them.”

Wilson, on writing tragedy:

“I aspire to write tragedies. I don’t know if I have or not, but that is what I sit down to write. Tragedy is the
greatest form of dramatic literature. Why settle for anything less than that? My sense of what a tragedy is includes
the fall of the flawed character; that is certainly a part of what is in my head as I write....There is a great deal of
humor in human life, and I think I find the humor, but the overall intent of the plays I write is very serious.”

More about his writing:

“I once wrote this short story called ‘The Best Blues Singer in the World,’ and it went like this: ‘The streets that
Balboa walked was his own private ocean, and Balboa was drowning.’ End of story. That says it all. Nothing else
to say. Since then, I’ve been rewriting that same story over and over again. All of my plays are rewriting that same
story. I’m not sure what it means, other than life is hard.”
 PART V: RESOURCES
Online Resources:
New York Times’ topics page on August Wilson, including an obituary by Charles Isherwood:
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/august_wilson/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=August%20
Wilson&st=cse

Timeline of Wilson’s life from the August Wilson Center for African American Culture website:
http://www.augustwilsoncenter.org/aacc_pdfs/AugustWilsonTimeline.pdf

A collection of articles about Wilson and his plays:

http://www.augustwilson.net/

“The Art of Theater: August Wilson” The Paris Review, Winter 1999
http://www.augustwilsoncenter.org/home.php

“August Wilson’s Life and Legacy” – National Public Radio tribute, October 3, 2005:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4933836

A great article about comparing the Negro Baseball League to contemporary players. “Strat-O-Matic baseball puts
spotlight on Negro Leagues”, LA Times, December 21, 2009.
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-strat-o-matic21-2009dec21,0,7468798.story

Other Resources
Conversations with August Wilson by Jackson R. Bryer (Editor), Mary C. Hartig (Editor)

I Ain’t Sorry for Nothin’ I Done: August Wilson’s Process of Playwriting by Joan Herrington

August Wilson’s Fences: A Reference Guide by Sandra G. Shannon

From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans by John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss Jr.

Education resource page of Negro League Baseball Museum website: http://www.nlbm.com/s/resource.cfm

Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues by John B. Holway

Baseball - A Film by Ken Burns

Burns’ ten-part PBS series covering Major League Baseball from its inception through the early 1990s – parts (or
“innings”) four through six cover the Negro Leagues.

Topics and Questions for Discussion

What is the significance of the play’s title and it being set in 1957?
What is the significance of baseball in the play?

Discuss the historical events and subjects referenced in the play that affect its characters. For example: racial
integration – in baseball and in the workplace, urban renewal/redevelopment, World War II.
Is Troy Maxson a heroic character? A tragic character? If so, what are his tragic flaws?

Compare Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman with August Wilson’s depiction of the American dream.

How do “fences” (real and metaphorical) create conflict between characters in the play? Who builds these
emotional “fences”? Are “fences” taken down?

How does Troy Maxson set up the direction of the play’s plot; what events does he reference or allude to that will
create a struggle for him throughout the course of the play?

How do the characters change throughout the play? Who changes the most; the least?

Do Troy’s actions cause changes in the other characters? Is he changed by other characters’ actions?

Towards the end of the play, what is the significance of Cory singing the song “Old Blue” that Troy sang earlier in
the play?

What happens to Gabe at the end of the play?

Does the set look realistic? Can you tell the characters’ standard of living based on the set?

How is music used in the play — both sound design and by the actors?