Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company’s August Wilson Festival: Three Plays Running!

There is no better month than August to see an August Wilson play, so three of them should be triply good. Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company is staging a mini-festival that has three running more or less concurrently. On certain days, you could even see all three in a single day.

The plays make up an interesting selection from Wilson’s body of work. Fences is the one that drew the most official acclaim: the rare combination of a Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is the only one of Wilson’s 10-play American Century Cycle (a.k.a. the Pittsburgh Cycle) that isn’t set in Pittsburgh—the setting is Chicago during the 1920s—and it is also the only one with a central character based on an actual person from history. Thirdly, PPTCo has chosen Two Trains Running. This is not about a railroad. The action unfolds in a diner in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, and Two Trains is a great example of Wilson’s ability to craft a powerful ensemble play, with multiple characters interacting dynamically. 

PPTCo calls the festival “August Wilson’s American Century Cycle Experience.” Speaking of which, the company arguably has more experience in interpreting and staging Wilson than any other theater company worldwide. Mark Clayton Southers, the founder and producing artistic director of Pittsburgh Playwrights, knew August Wilson. Early in his career, Southers studied under Wilson and worked with him on a series of staged readings. Southers credits Wilson for encouraging him to write plays of his own (which he has done). Furthermore, Southers has produced August Wilson events previous to this festival. And with the festival, Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company becomes the first organization to produce every one of Wilson’s plays at least twice. That’s experience. 

As for schedules: Fences opens the festival and after 17 performances, closes it, playing from August 8 through September 6. Two Trains Running has a nearly equal run, with 16 shows from August 9 – 30. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is staged 10 times—though one is slated as a private performance—from August 15 – 24. Visit the festival webpage to see how the schedules intersect and overlap. 

Two Trains and Ma Rainey are presented in the theaters at Pittsburgh Playwrights’ headquarters building, the Madison Arts Center. Fences plays outdoors at the historic August Wilson House, the playwright’s childhood home. 

Details on Each Play

August Wilson’s Fences is a drama about a hard man dealing with hard times. In the production that won the 1987 Tony for Best Play while also securing a Pulitzer Prize, James Earl Jones acted the role of Troy Maxson, a former baseball star turned garbage collector. The play is set during the 1950s, when Troy still looks back ruefully to his glory days as a player in the Negro Leagues. He’s sure he could have made it to the major leagues if the color barrier (the majors were slow to integrate) hadn’t gotten in the way. Then again, it’s possible that Troy’s criminal record and his age after serving a prison term might have been a factor. It’s possible, too, that Troy shouldn’t try to protect his teenage son from race-based failure by squelching the kid’s dream of a college football scholarship. Troy sometimes creates more problems than he solves, but the fire and the liveliness that he and the people around him display make Fences a great play, despite its not-so-happy ending. Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company presents Fences with Kevin Brown as Troy. Through September 6 outdoors at the August Wilson House, 1727 Bedford Ave., Upper Hill District. 

When August Wilson wrote Two Trains Running, it seems he routed his trains of thought through  switchyards full of twists and turns and dark tensions laced with crackling comedy. The result is a spellbinding combination. Set in the late 1960s, the play takes you inside a Hill District restaurant that’s a gathering spot for local people. The characters are an odd lot, ranging from a smug businessman proud of his recession-proof business—there’s always a market for a funeral parlor—to a young fellow just out of jail, eager to rile up support for the social-justice protests then rocking the land. Meanwhile a grim reaper is coming for the restaurant itself. Urban redevelopment dictates that the building must go. And as the owner frets and schemes over whether he’ll get a fair price and what to do next—while his no-nonsense waitress tries to hold steady in the eye of the storm—all this and more adds up to a massive swirl around an existential question: Can you trick your way through the winds of change or will they sweep you away anyhow? Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company presents Two Trains Running for your existential bedazzlement. Through August 30 at the Madison Arts Center, 3401 Milwaukee St., Upper Hill District.  

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom tells a turbulent tale of a jazz/blues band in 1920s Chicago. And although this August Wilson play is fiction, the title character was real. Blues singer Gertrude “Ma” Rainey was among the first African-American women to hit it big as a recording artist. In 1927, she really did record a song about a dance craze called the Black Bottom. Wilson’s play puts us in the studio with her band on that day, imagining a session that starts contentiously and spirals out of control. Rainey chafes at the fact that she can be a diva inside the studio but is treated as a lower-class citizen outside it. Her young, hot-headed trumpet player dreams of a future as a freewheeling jazz man and rebels at the music he’s asked to toot for Ma. As in other Wilson stories, there’s sharp-edged humor that turns tragic as the characters’ aspirations clash with the limits placed on them. This one features plenty of music as well. Willa “Katy” Cotten stars as Rainey in the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company production of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Through August 24 in the cabaret space at Madison Arts Center, 3401 Milwaukee St., Upper Hill District. 

Photos courtesy of Pittsburgh Playwrights.

Mike Vargo, an independent writer based in Pittsburgh, writes about theater for Entertainment Central. 

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