In this conversational, intimate look at August Wilson and the American Century Cycle, Dr. Kenneth Warren and Resident Artist Ron OJ Parson will examine how one of America’s most essential classic playwrights has been influenced by and impacted generations of Black artists.
Dr. Kenneth Warren's scholarship and teaching focuses on American and African American literature from the late nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth century. Professor Warren is particularly interested in the way that debates about literary form and genre articulate with discussions of political and social change. His single-authored books, which include What Was African American Literature? (Harvard 2010), So Black and Blue: Ralph Ellison and the Occasion of Criticism (Chicago, 2003), and Black and White Strangers: Race and American Literary Realism (Chicago, 1993), explore how American literature by black and white writers helped consolidate, and subsequently responded to, Jim Crow America. Professor Warren is also a coeditor of two books, Renewing Black Intellectual History: The Material and Ideological Foundations of African America Thought (Paradigm 2010) and Jim Crow, Literature, and the Legacy of Sutton E. Griggs (Georgia 2013). His articles have also appeared in Boston Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Jacobin. At the University of Chicago, the various courses he teaches reflect his interest in genre, the politics of race, and the relation of culture to politics.
Dr. Sandra G. Shannon is Professor of African American Literature in the Department of English at Howard University. She is a leading scholar on the works of playwright August Wilson with titles such as The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson and August Wilson's Fences: A Reference Guide to her credit. She coedited the essay collection August Wilson and Black Aesthetic and is completing her work as coeditor of the forthcoming MLA Approaches to Teaching series volume Approaches to Teaching the Plays of August Wilson. Dr. Shannon has most recently published “An Intimate Look at Lynn Nottage,” which appeared along with an in-depth interview of the playwright in the collection, Contemporary African American Women Playwrights. She is also the author of “Women Playwrights Who Cross Cultural Borders,” which appears in the 2013 edition of The Cambridge Companion to African American Theatre. Dr. Shannon is currently part of an NEH award-winning team that will produce the PBS American Masters documentary on August Wilson set to air in 2014. She was recently named a Fulbright Specialist and has since won a grant from the U. S. State Department to travel to Botswana to do archival research on the written correspondences of the country’s most influential writer, the late Bessie Head. Dr. Shannon has recently accepted the editorship of the College Language Association Journal.
Honey Crawford’s research interests include global feminisms, critical race theory, public spectacle, and protest. She specializes in Afro Brazilian cultural performance as both a scholar and practitioner, exploring intersections between ritual performance and self-making through a repertoire that includes carnival, media activism, radical theatre, and the performance of everyday life. She earned her PhD in theatre studies from Cornell University in 2017 where she was also a New York Public Humanities Fellow.
Honey is currently developing her dissertation into her book manuscript, Negra Demais! Overwhelming Performances of Afro Brazilian Femininity. This project takes an interdisciplinary approach, positioning women-driven spectacles of black consciousness in the 20th- 21st century against prevalent discourse on the black diaspora and performance studies. Paying close attention to theatrical traditions that press against the bounds of propriety and indulge in an aesthetic of abundance, this book identifies a preoccupation with the transgressive potential held in performances of black feminine power.
Ron OJ Parson hails from Buffalo, New York and is a graduate of the University of Michigan’s professional theatre program. He is a Resident Artist at Court Theatre, former co-founder and artistic director of the Onyx Theatre Ensemble, and co-founder of the Beyond the Stage Theatre Project. Ron is a company member of TimeLine Theatre, and associate artist at Writers Theatre and Teatro Vista. Court Theatre: Fences, Gem of the Ocean, Seven Guitars, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, and Jitney by August Wilson; The Mountaintop by Katori Hall; Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett; Sizwe Banzi is Dead by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona; Blues for an Alabama Sky and Flyin’ West by Pearl Cleage; Home by Samm-Art Williams; Wait Until Dark by Frederick Knott; The First Breeze of Summer by Leslie Lee; and the musical Five Guys Named Moe. In Chicagoland, Ron has also worked with Black Ensemble Theatre, eta Creative Arts Foundation, Chicago Dramatists, Congo Square, Oak Park Theatre Festival, Goodman, Victory Gardens, Northlight, Chicago Dramatists, Urban Theater Company, Steppenwolf, and City Lit Theatre. Regional theatres include American Players Theatre, Virginia Stage Company, Portland Stage (Maine), Studio Arena Theatre, Roundabout, Studio Theatre (DC), Baltimore Center Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Wilshire Theater, Coronet Theatre, The Mechanic Theatre, Milwaukee Rep, St. Louis Black Rep, Pittsburgh Public Theater, Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre, Geva, Signature (New York), The Alliance Theatre, South Coast Rep, Kansas City Repertory, and Pasadena Playhouse. In Canada, Ron directed the world premiere of Palmer Park at the Stratford Festival. Ron is a member of SAG-AFTRA, SDC, and Actors Equity. Visit www.RonOJParson.com.
Joel Rhone is a PhD student at the University of Chicago. Joel earned his BA from Howard University in 2016, and after winning the Marshall Scholarship he received an MA from the University of Manchester in 2017. His research interests include historical fiction, diaspora studies, and Black writers in exile. More broadly, he studies the performance of solidarity in African American letters. Joel was awarded honorable mention for the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship in 2019, and serves as an admissions assistant with UChicago GRAD.
Court’s remote, digital experiences are produced in partnership with the University of Chicago Graham School's Arts@Graham series.
Photo of Jacqueline Williams and Tyla Abercrumbie in August Wilson's GEM OF THE OCEAN by Michael Brosilow.
Photo of August Wilson with Ron OJ Parson by Ray Baker.
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Written in an episodic series of vignettes, Caryl Churchill’s 1983 play Fen explores the social and economic constraints of individuals in a rural community in England. Although the majority of the work follows the tale of Val, a woman who grapples with the decision to leave her family, the other characters are given considerable stage time as well. The struggle of women to gain agency is explored in the situations of other characters, from defiant Nell to abused Becky to resigned Shirley. The play delves into the impossibility of escape as the individuals struggle to release themselves from their situation yet must continue to face its realities and the repercussions of their dissatisfaction.
As for the name of the play, “the Fens,” also known as the Fenland or the Fenlands, refers to the coastal plain in eastern England. “Fen” is a term for a marshland, a natural phenomenon that captures the interest of artists and environmentalists alike. Over the years, they have been the target for draining for an agricultural agenda but have recently been the subject of numerous conservation efforts as well. At the time Churchill wrote Fen, the intensive Fenland survey, which would later change into the Fenland Project, was initiated to learn more about the rapidly changing land and all the archaeological treasures it held. Churchill’s work examines the everyday life and social constraints of people, particularly women, in this geographic region.
Caryl Churchill is an English playwright known for her feminist works that often tackle themes like oppression and the abuse of power through a postmodern, experimental lens. Born in England, Churchill immigrated to Canada at ten years old, though she would return to England for and after receiving a university education. Her career started with creating plays that her fellow Oxford students performed. She then went on to write radio dramas and television plays, managing her new family life while never neglecting her own career.
Blending social critique with a surrealist approach is a distinct technique that forms the basis of Churchill’s approach to stage work. Her exploration of unfulfilled yet consuming desire, such as the desire to reap the benefits of two irreconcilable realities and the need for escape if not satisfied, is a pervasive theme in several of her works. Churchill constantly reimagines the potential breadth and depth of what a play can be and how it can communicate, responding to the social discourse by reexamining themes in a rich variety of unique ways. She is renowned for her experimentation with language, structure, and form. Churchill is elusive, having an indelible mark on younger generations of playwrights yet rarely appearing for interviews. At 82, she is considered to be one of the greatest living playwrights, respected for her notable risks and experimental novelty.
Considered to be Sophocles’ most political play in the Oedipus Trilogy, Antigone was actually written before the other plays, though it takes place last chronologically. First performed around 441 - 442 B.C.E., it still enraptures audiences today with its exploration of pertinent themes like free will and civil disobedience.
The play follows its titular character, the daughter of Oedipus, after the events of Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus. Antigone finds herself engaged to her cousin Haemon, and her father’s former kingdom now ruled by her uncle Creon. Where Creon was ambiguous in Oedipus, the unexplored sides of his character are brought forth as his tyrannical ways have caused Thebes to once again fall ill. After Oedipus’ sons, Polynices and Eteocles, kill each other in battle, Creon dictates that Eteocles will be given a proper hero’s burial but Polynices will not receive similar treatment. He orders all of Thebes that no one is allowed to perform funeral rites for his nephew, a ruling that Antigone rebels against. She embarks on a quest not for the sake of rebelling, but to honor her beloved brother and stand for her rights rather than mindlessly acquiesce to Creon’s cruel tyranny.
[caption id="attachment_14035" align="alignleft" width="211"]
Statue of Sophocles.[/caption]
Questions of leadership, free will, civil disobedience, and the cost of wisdom are all explored in this last installment of the trilogy, an addition that furthers Sophocles’ legacy as his plays handle themes that are still relevant today. Creon’s despotic rule is met by Antigone’s steadfast defiance and her refusal to submit ensures she is a character who endures throughout the ages. As is expected for a work by this Greek playwright, the play also contains a thoughtful rumination on the relationship between gods and humans without having any god directly interact with any mortal on stage. Divine law and judicial law clash as Antigone and Creon look to two different paths and must contend with the consequences of their decisions.
At the time this play was first performed, Sophocles was one of the state treasurers in Athens and by then had experience as a general. Such personal life experiences perhaps were factors in his exploration of public and private duty in Antigone. While the impact of personal occupation on his works is conjecture, the struggles in his plays remain relevant to audiences of various backgrounds as they grapple with questions of agency and free will when faced with the pressing influence of social institutions. As for the historical context, the play was written during a period that was bookended by turmoil, from wars to revolts. Some consider the character of Creon to be loosely modeled on Pericles, an Athenian statesman involved in the formation of the Athenian empire. Sophocles interprets and portrays the world around him through the dynamic lens of theatre."
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