There is no shortage of powerful contemporary responses to the plight of African-Americans today: Black Lives Matter, the music of Kendrick Lamar and even Beyonce’s “Formation” video.
But Lou Bellamy believes there is still a need for a work like Fences, a play written in the early 1980s and set in the 1950s. His production of August Wilson’s play opens this week at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater.
“I think August Wilson is an old voice,” Bellamy told me by telephone recently. “It doesn’t mean that his plays aren’t relevant or that he wasn’t aware of the world. But the voice is a seasoned one.”
In Fences, the most powerful voice belongs to Troy Maxson, a former Negro League baseball player who now supports his family as a garbage collector. When his son, Cory, is has a chance at a college football scholarship, Maxson can’t get past the bitterness he felt over his segregated past, and he refuses to allow his son to continue playing.
While Wilson’s play is suffused with struggles unique to African-Americans, Bellamy sees the play as a universal story.
“One of the things that makes this an enduring and great play is that Troy Maxson is a true tragic hero,” he says. “He’s unable to see his Achilles’ Heel.”
“He wasn’t and isn’t aware of the ways in which racism has warped him and his view of the world,” he continues. “He’s still rebelling against it, and doesn’t know that the world has changed. The courage to confront it is still worthwhile, but the strategies have changed. He’s out of step with that.”
And what makes Troy as true tragic hero, Bellamy says—and what makes Fences such a moving story–is Troy’s lack of self-awareness: “Everyone in the audience and everyone on stage can see what’s happening. He’s the only one who can’t.”
It’s no surprise that Bellamy can speak with such authority about Troy Maxson, Fences, and, indeed, all of August Wilson’s work. As founder of St. Paul, Minnesota’s Penumbra Theatre—the largest African-American theater company in the United States—Bellamy has been intimately associated with Wilson’s work for over three decades. While most of Wilson’s plays are set in Pittsburgh, where he spent the first part of his life, he his career as a playwright took root in St. Paul when he moved there in 1978, eventually becoming a company member of Penumbra, which produced some of his early plays.
And that connection continued after Wilson became a national figure—a playwright now often mentioned alongside American masters such as Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller. Over the years, Bellamy has become one of the signature directors of Wilson’s work, and Penumbra has the distinction of producing more of his plays than any other theater in the country.
And Bellamy knows Troy Maxson from the inside out. In 1990, Bellamy played Troy Maxson for six months in a production seen at several theaters.
The production of Fences that arrives in Milwaukee this week has already played to strong reviews in Arizona and Indiana. Not surprising given the cast, which includes several company members from Penumbra. “This company is probably one of the strongest I’ve lead,” says Bellamy. “These are people who have studied those rhythms and nuances their entire careers. They understand the innate rhythms in the piece, as well as the African-American cultural rhythm and ethos that bring it to life. It’s really quite wonderful.”
