Fences

Jukwaa Mazoa (Swahili for- stage production) presents August Wilson’s Fences, at the Players Ring in Portsmouth NH.

Some may be familiar with the story of Jackie Robinson breaking major league baseball’s color barrier, and the impact it has had on American society over the past 50 years. We have also heard stories about the tremendous athletes that preceded him in the Negro Leagues. But, we all know and have heard far less about those Negro League stars that did not make it to the major leagues, and the ongoing struggles many such talented black athletes endured.

Wilson’s Fences is a play set in 1957 about Troy Maxson, a former Negro League star, who is now working as a garbage man, for whom the racial barrier came down too late. Embittered by his exclusion from the major leagues, Troy wants his son to learn a trade and give up dreams of attending college on a sport scholarship. Maxson struggles for fairness in society while trying to raise a family and make ends meet. Throughout the play, Wilson uses the baseball metaphor in relation to life and death. Billy M Butler directs.