August Wilson / Fences
Background and reading questions
See powerpoint on Moodle for major texts by Wilson, info about Pittsburgh (where Wilson grew up) as a
setting, baseball, and jazz
Specifics about play setting:
Time frame for the play: opens in 1957. Troy is 53 years old
In an ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos, Denzel Washington says that in Scene 1, Troy is “like their
t.v.” He’s going to tell these stories. Wilson “lets the audience relax, and it gets you in, and then here he
comes, and things start changing.”
—So many actors attracted to the play because Troy is such a lively, inventive, funny storyteller, and the
family’s dynamics can be (at times) playful, teasing, lively as well
Takes place in Hill District in Pittsburgh, the industrial north
—Troy not born there, though: in agrarian south; his father was a cotton sharecropper for a Mr. Lubin
—1918, Troy walked 200 miles to Mobile, AL, then went north. But are things much better up north?
Historical context:
Work for Troy so central: he works “at the rubbish” and Troy resists segregated jobs in sanitation dept.
The 50s marks the beginning of the modern civil rights movement:
1954 Brown v Board of Education: state laws allowing desegregated public schools are ruled
