Links for 2/17 -- Fences & Soul Gone Home

The picture above is from the recent Broadway revival of Fences.

James Earl Jones played Troy in the original Broadway version.

To start with, here is a link to Oberlin's site for its Death of a Salesman:

http://inside.oberlin.edu/salesman/index2.shtml

The pictures from the production are here:

http://inside.oberlin.edu/salesman/showphotos.shtml

Below is the video from the BBC production that we watched:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-nmJH0yKK4&feature=related

The actor who played Willy in the BBC version also played the character on which Norman Lear based his Archie Bunker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YvA67iKDZk

There is no movie version of Fences, but here are some trailers from various productions:

I'm not sure where this production is from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVlKzsWQc8g

Denzel Washington recently played Troy in a Broadway revival of Fences:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKsDRcuePnk

Ah, here is a collection of scenes from that version!

http://www.youtube.com/user/FencesBroadway

Kenny Leon directed another version at Boston's Huntington Theater:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp8OhjIkRNs

In 2007, Portland (OR) Center Stage presented this version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1qov8jlkXQ&playnext=1&list=PLC22B5D78F82DC4C1

This version is a film rather than a play filmed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24dkF5jJLIM&feature=related

The last clip is a classroom version from Introduction to Theater at CUNY Baruch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnGf0Zc_4X8&feature=related

Here is a video of Langston Hughes' Soul Gone Home.  It was made at Harold Washington College in Chicago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PY5CAraFRE

I will also link to my blog entries on two of August Wilson's other plays from his Century Cycle.

 http://en202.blogspot.com/2008/04/august-wilson-gem-of-ocean.html

http://en202.blogspot.com/2009/06/more-local-theateraugust-wilson-radio.html

Enjoy!

Dr. Szlyk

More Local Theater...August Wilson's Radio Golf

If I were to put together an anthology of world literature, I would like to include one of August Wilson's plays from his Pittsburgh Cycle.  In fact, if I teach EN 202HM again, I would assign one of these plays as the extra reading.  I would be interested in seeing how Gem of the Ocean or Fences or Joe Turner's Come and Gone or even Radio Golf would work with our readings, both the African and African-American works as well as our plays.

Compared to Mother Courage or Gem of the Ocean, Radio Golf is a fairly traditional, straightforward play.  It emphasizes Harmond Wilks' interactions with the other characters (his wife, Mame; his business partner, Roosevelt Hicks; his old schoolmate and current employee, Sterling Johnson; and Elder Joseph Barlow, a seemingly homeless man who turns out to be Wilks' cousin).  Wilson seems to have been wrapping up his cycle in this play.  Elder Joseph Barlow is the son of Citizen Barlow and Black Mary from Gem of the Ocean.  Black Mary was the protege of Aunt Ester (who died in the 1980s), and Elder Joseph (or "Old Joe") is fighting to preserve Aunt Ester's house at 1839 Wylie Avenue.  Harmond Wilks, on the other hand, is the grandson of Caesar Wilks, the black police constable in Gem of the Ocean.  Harmond is a real estate developer with plans to demolish 1839 Wylie Avenue and replace it with a condo complex complete with Barnes and Nobles, Whole Foods, and Starbucks.  He is also running for mayor of Pittsburgh.  If he's successful, he will be the first African-American mayor of Pittsburgh.


Here are a few images of the various characters in Radio Golf.  The play, by the way, is set in 1997.

In this poster from a Broadway production of the play, we see Harmond and Mame together.



On the other hand, Chicago's Goodman Theater depicted the couple in this way.  The actor playing Mame looks quite young.

This picture of the irrepressible Roosevelt and Harmond together comes from the Boston University Theater's production from 2006.  BTW, the actor playing Roosevelt (he is wearing glasses) looks a little like my ex-boss from the 1990s.

Or you may prefer this picture of Roosevelt in his golf outfit.  He is obsessed with golf!  This picture is from a British production.

There the two men are with Elder Joseph (seated).  Roosevelt is trying to browbeat him while Harmond looks on.  This production is a very recent one from Detroit.


Then, in this picture, Harmond and Sterling (the painter) are with Elder Joseph.  Here Anthony Chisolm plays Elder Joseph.  This again is from the Broadway production of Radio Golf.

August Wilson's Gem of The Ocean

  This photo from Syracuse Stage's 2007 production of August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean is very striking, but I thought I'd put up some words this evening to go with it.  Also, I'd like to find a few good pictures as well.

Gem of the Ocean is the first play in August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle...or Century Cycle, his series of ten plays, one for each decade of the 20th century.  Here is the Kennedy Center's site on Wilson's cycle.  It's a good, quick overview with useful links.

http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/index.cfm?fuseaction=showevent&event=titac

For more information on August Wilson, see this extensive obituary from the NY Times. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/03/theater/newsandfeatures/03wilson.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Gem of the Ocean is set in the 1900s, a period of time that was as close to the Civil War as we are now to the 1960s.  Two of the characters in the play, Eli and Solly Two Kings, had helped to bring slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad.  During the play, Solly tells of his own escape from Alabama, and he is intending to return there to rescue his sister.  Another character, Aunt Ester had been a slave as well (although she is a mystical individual, being 287 years old and able to travel to "The City of Bones.")  In the picture above, Aunt Ester, together with Eli, Solly, and Black Mary (Aunt Ester's protege), is conducting Citizen Barlow, a young refugee from Alabama, to that city so that he can redeem himself despite a death that he was responsible for.  (At the beginning of the play, another young man has drowned himself rather than admit to a crime he did not commit.  Citizen not only committed the crime but also looked on while the young man drowned.)

The productions of Gem of the Ocean & Fences that my husband and I saw at the Kennedy Center were staged readings.  In other words, each of the actors carried with him or her a bound script; however, some barely relied on their scripts and even used them to substitute for various props.  The actor playing Black Mary, for example, held her script as if it were a frying pan.  In Fences, on the other hand, the actors playing Troy and Rose passed a script between them as though it were the baby that he had brought home from the hospital.  Despite the performances being staged readings, the actors usually wore appropriate costumes, and the set design evoked Pittsburgh without being terribly fussy.  In fact, the same blue/black background served for both plays that I saw; only the arrangement of tables and chairs differed.  This is very different from some productions that I have seen; there the set design has been very elaborate, almost museum-quality.  (See the pictures below from "Jitney" and "Joe Turner's Come and Gone.")

However, as Gem of the Ocean contains much magic realism, a museum-quality set might be inappropriate.  After all, Citizen Barlow travels to the City of Bones in a paper boat made from Aunt Ester's bill of sale, and the play's most prosaic character, Caesar, is clearly an interloper.

Here are some reviews of other performances of Gem of the Ocean.  Phylicia Rashad (the mother on The Cosby Show) has played Aunt Ester; she has also directed another production of this same play.

http://broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=1873

http://www.theaterscene.net/ts/articles.nsf/RP/0E50FE60ABD8EB8D8525709D003F8C5D

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06156/695731-325.stm

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/01/16/083723.php

DC's Arena Theater also staged Gem of the Ocean in 2006:

http://dctheatrescene.com/2007/02/06/gem-of-the-ocean/


Below is a picture from that production.  The actor playing Citizen Barlow looks quite young!


To finish with, here is another scene from the Huntington Theater's production.  In this scene, Aunt Ester is sending the peddler Rutherford Selig off to find Solly and Citizen before the police constable Caesar finds them.  Here Phylicia Rashad plays Aunt Ester.


There she is with Solly Two Kings.  Anthony Chisolm also played Solly's role at the Kennedy Center's reading.