Fences
http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/kerkhoff/ContempDrama/WilsonAugust.htm
http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/kerkhoff/ContempDrama/WilsonAugust.htm#Vaughan2
Mending `Fences'
For the first time since playwright August Wilson rose to prominence in the 1980s, his words will be heard at the Guthrie Theater
(Minneapolis Star Tribune)
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One of the most enduring oversights in the history of Twin Cities theater should be put to rest Wednesday, when August Wilson's "Fences" opens at the Guthrie Theater.
It will be the first time the words of the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and former St. Paul resident will have spilled across the Guthrie apron. It is not, however, a Guthrie production. For the first time, the Guthrie has joined with another Twin Cities theater to produce jointly a play at its space. The artistic side of "Fences" is all Penumbra Theatre: The play is directed by Claude Purdy, a long-time Wilson friend and associate, and stars Lou Bellamy, Penumbra's founder and artistic director. The Guthrie is handling the marketing, publicity and box
office, a novel arrangement worked out by Bellamy and Guthrie artistic director Joe Dowling.
Having the St. Paul-based Penumbra mount the play, rather than the Guthrie itself, is a fitting means of erasing what has been a sore point in Twin Cities theater ever since Wilson's rise to prominence in the early 1980s.
At least Wilson thinks so.
"This is the way I would have liked the show to be done here. It would have been nice to have been here eight or nine years ago but . . . " he said last week shortly after his return to the Twin Cities, where he spent his most productive years before moving to Seattle in 1990.
"Fences," which earned him the first of his two Pulitzers in 1987, is not Wilson's favorite among his six plays that have reached Broadway. It is, however, the most distinctive.
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