August Wilson

An African-American father struggles with race relations in the United States while trying to raise his family in the 1950s and coming to terms with the events of his life. ** Viola Davis received an Oscar (89th Academy Awards - 2017) for "Actress in a Leading Role". * Fences received 4 Oscar Nominations (89th Annual Academy Awards - 2017): "Best Picture" "Actor in a Leading Role" - Denzel Washington "Actress in a Supporting Role" - Viola Davis "Writing (Adapted Screenplay)"

The focus of Wilson's attention in Fences is Troy, a 53-year-old head of household who struggles with providing for his family. The play takes place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; although never officially named it makes mention to several key locations in Pittsburgh. Troy was a great baseball player in his younger years, having spent time practicing while in prison for an accidental murder he had committed during a robbery. Because the color barrier had not yet been broken in Major League Baseball, Troy was unable to make good money or to save for the future. (However, one line within the play does cast some doubt as to whether it was Troy's age, not his skin color, that kept him from becoming a professional baseball player.) He now lives a menial, though respectable life of trash collecting-remarkably crossing the race barrier and becoming a driver instead of just a barrel lifter. He lives with his wife, Rose, his son Cory (who still lives in the house at the play's opening), and Troy's younger brother Gabriel, an ex-soldier whose war injury to his head has caused him noticeable psychological damage. Lyons is Troy's son from a previous marriage, and lives outside the home. Bono is Troy's best friend. Troy had taken Gabriel's money that he'd been entitled to for his injury, and bought the house he currently lives in. A short time before the play's opening, Gabriel has rented a room elsewhere, but still in the neighborhood.

The play is set in 1904 at 1839 Wylie Avenue in Pittsburgh's Hill District. Aunt Ester, the drama's 285-year-old fiery matriarch, welcomes into her home Solly Two Kings, who was born into slavery and scouted for the Union Army, and Citizen Barlow, a young man from Alabama searching for a new life and in search of redemption. Aunt Ester is not too old to practice healing; she guides him on a soaring, lyrical journey of spiritual awakening to the City of Bones.

Jitney is a play in two acts by August Wilson. The eighth in his "Pittsburgh Cycle", this play is set in a worn-down gypsy cab station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in early autumn 1977.

Set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1985, it tells the story of an ex-con in Pittsburgh trying to rebuild his life. The play has been described as one of Wilson's darkest, telling the tale of a man trying to save $10,000 by selling stolen refrigerators so that he can buy a video store, as well as revisiting stories of other characters initially presented in Seven Guitars.

The play is set in Chicago in the 1920s (the only play in the group not set in Pittsburgh), and deals with issues of race, art, religion and the historic exploitation of black recording artists by white producers.

Harmond Wilkes, an Ivy League-educated man who has inherited a real estate agency from his father, his ambitious wife Mame, and his friend Roosevelt Hicks want to redevelop the Hill District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The project, called the Bedford Hills Redevelopment Project, includes two high-rise apartment buildings and high-end chain stores like Starbucks, Whole Foods, and Barnes & Noble. Harmond is also about to declare his candidacy to be Pittsburgh's first black mayor. Roosevelt has just been named a vice-president of Mellon Bank and has been tapped by a Bernie Smith to help him acquire a local radio station at less than market value, which is possible through a minority tax incentive.

Just released from jail, Blues singer Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton is asked to sign a record deal after a song he recorded months before becomes an unexpected hit.[1] After a year of trials and tribulations, Floyd is ready to right the past year's wrongs and return to Chicago with a new understanding of what's important in his life. Unfortunately his means of righting wrongs are inherently flawed. The play's recurring theme is the African-American male's fight for his own humanity, self-understanding and self-acceptance in the face of personal and societal ills. The rooster is a recurring symbol of black manhood throughout the play, and provides a violent and shocking foreshadowing effect when Hedley delivers a fiery monologue and ritualistically slaughters one in front of the other characters.

Set in 1936 Pittsburgh during the aftermath of the Great Depression, The Piano Lesson follows the lives of the Charles family in the Doaker Charles household and an heirloom, the family piano. The play focuses on the arguments between a brother and a sister who have different ideas on what to do with the piano. The brother, Boy Willie, is a sharecropper who wants to sell the piano to buy the land (Sutter's land) where his ancestors toiled as slaves. The sister, Berniece, remains emphatic about keeping the piano, which shows the carved faces of their great-grandfather's wife and son during the days of their enslavement.

The play takes place in the Hill District, an African-American neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1969. It explores the social and psychological manifestations of changing attitudes toward race from the perspective of urban blacks.