Understanding
modern realism
2010. 05.13
Observation of the ordinary
• As image of truth verified by observing ordinary life,
realism has been a principal style of writing and
performance since the 1860s.
• Realism as a social philosophy and artistic style
developed in the European theater about 1860,
influenced by philosophers, naturalists and scientists.
• The “real” meant essentially the impersonal and
objective observation of the physical world and direct
scrutiny of contemporary life and manners. The realists
focused on the observed, material world around them
and on contemporary social issues.
Observation of the ordinary
• Responding to the new intellectual currents,
realistic playwrights emphasized details of
contemporary life based on the five senses
of sights hearing, taste, smell and touch,
and brought a new kind of recognizable
truth to the stage by introducing subjects
and characters not previously considered
acceptable, especially for tragedy.
• As an offshoot of the new realism, writers
such as Zola, Ibsen and Strindberg also
fostered a secondary movement in the
1880s called naturalism. Naturalism
centered on the study and dissection of
observable behavior along with heredity
and environment as chief influences on
human behavior.
The “New” dramatic text
• Realism and naturalism, which paralleled
realistic writing fro 20 years (from 1870 to
1890), were closely linked as styles for
effecting truthful, empirical depictions of
life on stage.
• Ibsen’s plays of social realism – The Pillars
of Society, An Enemy of the People, A
Doll’s House, Ghosts, Rosmerersholm, and
The Wild Duck – established many tents of
new writing for the stage.
• The “new” tragic character is reduced in
social class, personal ambitions and
universal influence.
• In the new realistic text, dialogue
approximates everyday conversation,
dispensing with verse, soliloquies and
asides.
Strindberg's nineteenth
century masterpiece, Miss
Julie, described the new tragic
hero for the modern age.
The photographic landscapes
• Since environment played such a dominant
role in subject matter and characters’ lives
in the new realism and naturalism, writers
and directors made special efforts to bring
accurate details into the play’s physical
world – living areas, clothing, furniture,
décor and light sources.
• As early as 1882, Ibsen insisted in a letter
to the Norwegian director of An Enemy of
the People that the staging should reflect
“truthfulness to natural – the illusion that
everything is real and that one is sitting
and watching something that is actually
taking place in real life.”
Naturalism’s “case studies”
• Emile Zola fathered naturalistic
writing as an outgrowth of the
realistic movement by advocating
scientific methods as the key to
all truth, social progress an
artistic endeavors.
• Zola’s statements on naturalism
are to be found in his preface to
the dramatization of his novels.
Some of Zola’s followers argued
that a play should be a “slice of
life”
(Paris, 1840-1902)
The well-made play
• The father of the well-made play,
Augustin-Eugène Scribe (1791-1861),
wrote some 374 works for the Paris
commercial theater and for French opera
as well.
• The characteristics of the well-made play
are essentially nine in number and
emphasize tight plotting with reversals,
secrets, misunderstandings, contrived
exits and entrances and climactic events
occurring only moments before the
curtain comes down.
The well-made play
• Scribe’s plot was based on:
1. A secret known to the audience but withheld from certain
characters
2. Plot develops a pattern of increasingly intense action and
suspense prepared by exposition and enhanced by contrived
entrances and exits
3. Misunderstanding develops among characters
4. A series of ups and downs in his/her fortunes
5. Change in fortune for the worst
6. An obligatory scene
7. Denouncement or resolution occurs where all is satisfactory
explained
8. Play’s acts repeat the overall pattern of action
9. Each act build its own climax
Fences
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize; four Tony
awards (including Best Play); three
Drama Desk Awards and the New York
Drama Critics Circle Award, FENCES is
the second installment of August
Wilson's extraordinary ten play cycle
exploring the African-American
experience in each decade of the 20th
century.
August Wilson
Introduction
• Fences is a 1983 play by
American playwright August Wilson. Set in the
1950s, it is the sixth in Wilson's tenpart Pittsburgh Cycle.
• Fences explores the evolving AfricanAmerican experience and examines race
relations, among other themes.
• Wilson’s central character is both victim and
victimizer. Wilson uses Troy Maxon’s ambiguous
moral status to question the mechanics of
patriarchy and to universalize both central
character and theme.
• Wilson converts the yard “fence” into play’s
controlling metaphor. The fence is tangible, but
it is also Wilson’s metaphor for the cultural
situation of African Americans in the late fifties.
Author
• August Wilson, the
Pulitzer Prize-winning
author of Ma Rainey's
Black Bottom, The Piano
Lesson and Fences, has
died from liver Cancer
at the age of 60; leaving
a sparsely populated
field of genuinely great
playwrights that much
more empty.
Characters
• Troy Maxson The main character
of the play. Married to Rose. Has
three children: Lyons, Cory, and,
later in the story, Raynell. He
cheated on his wife of 18 years
and impregnates Alberta to
father Raynell.
• Jim Bono Troy's best friend and
obvious "follower" in their
friendship, but is very committed
to him.
• Rose Maxson Troy's wife of 18
years, and the mother of Troy's
second son, Cory. She is also very
faithful and puts much trust in
Troy.
• Cory Maxson Troy's son who,
against his father's wishes, plays
football and temporarily leaves
his job during the football season,
infuriating his father, who
eventually kicks him out of the
Maxson home.
•
Rob Riley (Cory),
Wandachristine (Rose),
and Wendell Wright
(Troy) August Wilson's
FENCES. Photo by T.
Charles Erickson.
As TROY
MAXON in
August
Wilson’s
“FENCES”
The San Antonio Current Magazine’s
Readers Pick for Best Play category in their
“Best of Arts” Awards*
“Fences.” Directed by Antoinette Winstead
• Elayn J. Taylor (Rose) and James
Williams (Troy Maxon)in August
Wilson's "Fences." (Ann Marsden)
Fences directed by Ron OJ Parson
Troy Maxson (Charles Robinson) sits and
contemplates his life
Characters
• Gabriel Troy's brother who
received a substantial head
wound in World War
II from shrapnel. He is now insane,
believing himself to be
the archangel Gabriel. Gabriel
receives remuneration from the
Army, money which Troy takes
and uses to build his house. Gabe
is significant in the end when he
tries to play his trumpet, fails,
then dances thereby opening up
the gates of heaven.
• Lyons Troy's first son who was not
mothered by Rose. Troy always
has the impression that Lyons
only comes around for money.
• Alberta A never-seen woman
Troy desires. He cheats on Rose
with Alberta because it gets him
away from his responsibilities.
She dies giving birth to Raynell.
• Raynell Troy and Alberta's baby.
Rose accepts the duty of being
Raynell's mother when Alberta
dies in childbirth, and Raynell is
seen at the end of the play as a
happy seven-year-old sowing her
seeds prior to the funeral of Troy.
Plot synopsis
• The play begins on payday, with Troy and
Bono drinking and talking. Troy's character is
revealed through his speech about how he went
up to their boss, Mr. Rand, and asked
why black men are not allowed to drive garbage
trucks (they are garbage men); as a young man,
Troy once stabbed a man to death.
• Rose and Lyons join in the conversation. Lyons, a
musician, has come to ask for money, confident
he will receive it from his father. Troy gives his son
a hard time, but eventually gives him the ten
dollars requested.
Laurence Fishburn stars along
with Orlando Jones in August
Wilson's
"Fences“
• It is revealed that Troy has had an
affair with a woman named Alberta,
whom the audience never sees
throughout the play. It is revealed that
Alberta is impregnated and dies giving
birth to Raynell, the daughter
conceived from their union. During the
final Act, Raynell is seen as a happy
seven-year-old; Cory comes home
from war, and after initially refusing to
go to his father's funeral due to longstanding resentment, his mother
convinces him to pay his respects to
his father - the man who, though hardheaded and often poor at
demonstrating affection, nevertheless
loved his son.
Productions
• Fences premiered on Broadway at the 46th Street
Theatre on March 26, 1987 and closed on June 26, 1988
after 525 performances and 11 previews. Directed by Lloyd
Richards, the cast featured James Earl Jones (Troy
Maxson), Mary Alice (Rose), Ray Aranha (Jim Bono), Frankie
R. Faison (Gabriel), and Courtney B. Vance (Cory).
• The production won the 1987 Tony Award for Best Play, and
the Tony Award, Best Actor in a Play for James Earl Jones,
Best Featured Actress in a Play, Mary Alice, and Best
Direction of a Play, Lloyd Richards, as well as the Drama
Desk Award, Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Actor
in a Play (Jones) and Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play
(Mary Alice). It also received Tony Award nominations for
Best Featured Actor in a Play (Faison and Vance).
August Wilson Cycle at Kennedy Center
The first Broadway revival of the play
opened at the Cort Theatre in previews on
April 14, 2010, officially on April 26, 2010 in
a limited 13-week engagement. Directed
by Kenny Leon, the cast stars Denzel
Washington(Troy Maxson) and Viola
Davis (Rose).
• Fences by August Wilson Sycamore Rouge (2007)
Youtube links
• "Fences" by August Wilson - Presented by CBG Enterprises
Education Branch
• Denzel Back on Broadway in 'Fences' Revival
• FENCES by August Wilson/Theatre Arts Performance
• Fences by August Wilson at Portland Center Stage Cast +
Dir
• Fences
• Fences by August Wilson Cory (R.Boyd) Vs. Troy (R.Walker)
• Behind-the-Scenes of August Wilson's "Fences" at the
Huntington Theatre Company
• Fences by, Ausgust Wilson. (The play)
Important quotations
• "Death ain't nothing but a fastball on the outside
corner.“
• Early in the first scene of Act One, Troy weaves a talltale, or Uncle Remus story in the African American
tradition, about his supposed encounter with different
forms of death. With these words, Troy compares
death to an easy pitch, perfect for hitting a homerun.
Therefore, Troy portrays himself as invincible and
immortal to Bono and Rose. With this language, August
Wilson creates the impression that Troy is strong,
passionate for life, and fearless. This hyperbolic
depiction of Troy, so early in the play, helps to establish
Troy's character.
Important quotations
• "You got to take the crookeds with the straights. That's
what Papa used to say.“
• In the last scene of the play, Act Two, Scene Five, Lyons
recalls to Cory this statement that Troy used to say. When
Lyons says the phrase, he sees his own life from a similar
perspective that Troy saw in his own life. It is the first time in
the play that Lyons sees eye to eye with Troy. This is a
melancholy moment. With this line, Lyons recognizes that
though he decidedly took a different approach to life than
Troy, Lyons could not fulfill his own dreams or hold onto
what meant the most to him—just like Troy. This phrase
means that in life you have to accept misfortune just as
much as you accept good fortune. Troy's philosophy here is
that misfortune is inevitable, it is a part of life and one must
experience it.
Important quotations
• "Some people build fences to keep people out and other people
build fences to keep people in. Rose wants to hold on to you all.
She loves you.“
• In the first scene of Act Two, Bono explains to Cory and Troy why
Rose wants a fence built around their dirt yard. Neither Cory nor
Troy understands why Rose insists that they complete the fence. It
takes an outsider of the family, Bono, to observe why this project is
so important to Rose, and what the fence represents. The first part
of Bono's explanation sheds light on the behavior of his best friend,
Troy, standing before him and the second part describes the woman
he loves. By this point in the second act, the audience observes as
Bono describes the first type of fence builder. Troy keeps people out
of his life by negating their decisions, like his first son, Lyons'
decision to play jazz.
Important quotations
• "You can't visit the sins of the father upon the child.“
• Rose takes in Troy's illegitimate child as her own with
these words in Act Two, Scene Three. Rose's decision is
based on a similar line in the Bible. Rose, a religious
woman, believes that children are born innocent and
with these words, she says to Troy that she refrains
from blaming the baby for any of the faults of the
father, her adulterous husband. Rose agrees to raise
the child without bias, with unconditional love that she
no longer feels towards Troy.
Important quotations
• "That's the way that goes.“
• The last line of the play, spoken by Gabriel, concludes the story on a
half note. The ending feels like a major and minor chord,
simultaneously. After a disappointing attempt to open the heavens
for Troy with his broken trumpet, Gabriel makes up another way to
open the heavens. He dances, refuses help or comfort, and cries
out. In this moment, Gabriel represents the African American
tradition of improvisation. Despite overwhelming sadness, the loss
of his brother, his placement in an asylum and his trumpet's
inability to help him believe, Gabriel creates a new way of opening
the gates of heavens by using methods rooted in African traditions.
The dance and cry Wilson describes for Gabriel to perform, imply a
return to a time when blacks were free of the limitations brought
on by slavery, lynching, and Jim Crow laws.
Themes
• Coming of Age Within the Cycle of Damaged Black Manhood
• Both Troy and Bono relate stories of their childhood in the south
and tales of their relationships with difficult fathers to Lyons in Act
One, scene four. Their often-painful memories provide a context for
understanding the similarities and differences of the generations
separating Troy and Bono from Lyons and Cory. Troy's father, like
many blacks after the abolishment of slavery was a failed
sharecropper. Troy claims that his father was so evil that no woman
stayed with him for very long, so Troy grew up mostly motherless.
When Troy was fourteen, his father noticed that the mule Troy was
supposedly taking care of had wandered off. Troy's father found
Troy with a girl Troy had a crush on and severely beat Troy with
leather reins. Troy thought his father was just angry at Troy for his
disobedience, but proving Troy's father was even more despicable,
his father then raped the girl. Troy was afraid of his father until that
moment.
Themes
• Interpreting and Inheriting History
• Much of the conflict in Wilson's plays, including Fences, arises
because the characters are at odds with the way they see the past
and what they want to do with the future. For example, Troy
Maxson and his son, Cory see Cory's future differently because of
the way they interpret history. Troy does not want Cory to
experience the hardship and disappointment Troy felt trying to
become a professional sports player, so he demands that Cory work
after school instead of practicing with the football team. Cory,
however, sees that times changed since baseball rejected a player
as talented as Troy because of the color of his skin. Cory knows the
possibility exists that the professional sports world will include, not
exclude him. In Act One, Scene Three, Cory provides examples of
successful African American athletes to Troy.
Themes
• The Choice Between Pragmatism and Illusions as Survival
Mechanisms
• Troy and Rose choose divergent coping methods to survive their
stagnant lives. Their choices directly correspond to the opposite
perspectives from which they perceive their mutual world. In Act
Two, scene one, Troy and Rose say that they both feel as if they
have been stuck in the same place since their relationship began
eighteen years ago. However, Rose and Troy handle their frustration
and disappointment with their intertwined lives differently. This
difference in their viewpoints is evident early on in the play. In Act
One, scene one, Troy proves through his story about his battle with
Death that he is a dreamer and a believer in self-created illusions.
To Troy, his struggle with Death was an actual wrestling match with
a physical being. Rose, on the other hand, swiftly attempts to bring
Troy back to reality, explaining that Troy's story is based on an
episode of pneumonia he had in July, 1941.
Motifs
• Death and Baseball
• In Act one, scene one, Troy Maxson declares, "Death ain't nothing
but a fastball on the outside corner." With this line, the former
Negro League slugger merges his past experience as a ballplayer
with his philosophy. Troy, Bono, and Rose argue about the quality of
the Major League black ballplayer compared to Troy when he was in
his prime. A fastball on the outside corner was homerun material
for Troy. Though Troy feels beleaguered from work and deeply
troubled by coming along too early to play in the Major Leagues
because they were still segregated when he was in top form, Troy
believes he is unconquerable and almost immortal when it come to
issues of life and death. Troy knows he overcame pneumonia ten
years ago, survived an abusive father and treacherous conditions in
his adaptation to surviving in an urban environment when he
walked north to live in Pittsburgh, and jail. Baseball is what Troy is
most proud of and knows he conquered on his own.
Motifs
• Seeds and Growth
• Characters in Fences literally and figuratively employ the motif of seeds,
flowers, plants, and related actions like growing, taking root, planting, and
gestation—in both their language and actions. Like August Wilson's
mother whose name is Daisy, Rose has the name of a flower. Rose is a
typical African American 1950's housewife and, as the caretaker of the
family and home, she represents loving care and nurturing, attributes also
frequently used to grow plants. Like the characteristics of the flower after
which she is named, Rose is a beautiful soul who protects her family and
protects herself when Troy hurts her. In Act Two, scene, five, Rose
demonstrates to Raynell that seeds take time to grow. Rose says, "You just
have to give it a chance. It'll grow." She exemplifies patience and
generosity in her relationships with everyone in the play. For instance
when she sides with Cory on his decision to play football, her compassion
and concern for Gabriel when he is arrested and her acceptance of Raynell
as her own child when Alberta dies.
Motifs
• Blues
• August Wilson says he uses the language and attitude of
blues songs to inspire his plays and play characters. The
blues is a melancholy song created by black people in the
United States that tends to repeat a twelve bar phrase of
music and a 3-line stanza that repeats the first line in the
second line. A blues song usually contains several blue, or
minor, notes in the melody and harmony.
• Fences is structured somewhat like a blues song. The play
all takes place in one place like a key of music and the
characters each have their own rhythm and melody that
Wilson riffs off of around the common locale. Characters
repeat phrases, or pass phrases around, like a blues band
with a line of melody.
Symbols
• Trains
• Troy brings his illegitimate baby, Raynell home for the first time at
the beginning of the Act Two, Scene Three of Fences. Troy sits with
his motherless baby on a porch where he once reigned, but now is
an unwanted presence. Then, Troy sings the song, "Please Mr.
Engineer, let a man ride the line," which echoes the pleas of a man
begging a train engineer to let him ride, in hiding, for free.
Especially during the Harlem Renaissance (the flourishing of African
American artists, writers, poets, etc. in the first half of the
Twentieth Century) and during slavery times, respectively, trains
were common literary devices in African American literature and
music. A character that rides a train or talks of trains, or even goes
to a train station came to represent change.
Symbols
• Fences
• August Wilson did not name his play, Fences, simply because the
dramatic action depends strongly on the building of a fence in the
Maxson's backyard. Rather, the characters lives change around the
fence-building project which serves as both a literal and
a figurative device, representing the relationships that bond and
break in the arena of the backyard. The fact that Rose wants the
fence built adds meaning to her character because she sees the
fence as something positive and necessary. Bono observes that
Rose wants the fence built to hold in her loved ones. To Rose, a
fence is a symbol of her love and her desire for a fence indicates
that Rose represents love and nurturing. Troy and Cory on the other
hand think the fence is a drag and reluctantly work on finishing
Rose's project. Bono also observes that to some people, fences
keep people out and push people away.
Symbols
• The Devil
• Troy casts the Devil as the main character of his
exaggerated stories that entertain, bewilder and
frustrate his family and friends. Eventually, Troy's
association of the Devil as a harbinger of death comes
to represent his struggle to survive the trials of his life.
Many scenes in the play end with Troy speaking a
soliloquy to Death and the Devil. In Act One, Scene One,
Troy spins a long yarn, or tale about his fight for several
days with the Devil. The story of the Devil endears Troy
to audiences early on by revealing his capability to
imagine and believe in the absurd. In another story,
Troy turns a white salesman into a Devil.
C.W.E. Bigsby, from Modern American
Drama, 1945-1990*
• August Wilson chooses deliberately to situate his
characters historically, but his are not historical dramas
in the sense that he past is treated as icon. For him the
pas constitutes something more than a series of waystations on a journey towards the present.
• It is tempting to see August Wilson as doing for a black
underclass what Lorraine Hansberry did for the aspiring
middle class. But where she created characters who
self-consciously forged their frustrations and dreams
into social actions or political significance, he does not.
C.W.E. Bigsby, from Modern American
Drama, 1945-1990*
• There is an anger in the plays but it never
shapes itself into polemic. As a result the
anger and aggression bounce back and are
turned inwards.
• From the perspective of the 1960s such
writing would seem conservative. His
characters do not serve meaning; they speak
their lives and sometimes sing them.
Revisiting modern realism
• As a principal writing and performances
style for more than a century, realism
implies a conception of dramatic reality
different from that found in earlier works
by Sophocles, Shakespeare, or Oscar
Wilde.
• The realists tried to put on stage only
what could be verified by observing
ordinary life,
• The 19th century realists rendered setting,
character and dialogue so close to actual
life that audiences were convinced by the
illusion of contemporary reality.
Oscar Wilde is one of
the most iconic figures
from late Victorian
society.
Revisiting modern realism
• Today, the goals of realistic writers have
changed very little form those of their
predecessors.
• Writing styles that revolted against the
“illusion of the real” in the theater span a
period from the early 1900s to the present.
References
• Gans, Andrew and Jones, Kenneth."'Fences', with
Academy Award Winner Denzel Washington, Opens on
Broadway"playbill.com, April 26, 2010
• Napierkowski, Marie Rose (ed.) (January 2006)
[1998]. "Fences". Drama for Students. vol. 3. Detroit:
Gale;eNotes.com. Retrieved 2008-06-26.
• Further reading
• Wilson, August (1986). Fences: A Play (First edition ed.).
New York: Plume. ISBN 0452264014.
• Vecsey, George (1987-05-10). "Sports of the Times; Ray
Dandridge, The Hall of Fame and 'Fences'". New York
Times. Retrieved 2009-06-15.