Theater News

Broadway Revival of Fences Aiming for Spring 2009

Suzan-Lori Parks
(© Stephanie Diani)
Suzan-Lori Parks
(© Stephanie Diani)

A Broadway revival of August Wilson’s Fences, to be directed by playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, is now expected to open in Spring 2009. No other specific information has been announced.

Fences concerns Troy Maxson, a former star ballplayer in the Negro Leagues who now makes his living as a garbage collector. The play, which originally starred James Earl Jones, Mary Alice, and Courtney B. Vance, earned the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as four Tony Awards, including Best Play.

Parks won the Pulitzer Prize for her play Topdog/Underdog. Some of her other works include 365 Days/365 Plays, Fucking A, The America Play, Venus and In The Blood.

Wilson was the recipient of two Pulitzer Prizes, a Tony Award, two Drama Desks, seven New York Drama Critics Circle Awards, and numerous other honors, all of which he achieved before he died of liver cancer in 2005, at the age of 60. His other plays include Gem of the Ocean, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars, Two Trains Running, Jitney, King Hedley II, and Radio Golf.