Start of the Century Cycle

After reading The Piano Lesson and Seven Guitars (from the center of August Wilson’s Century Cycle), I decided that I wanted to read the rest of the plays in the series.

I remember seeing Gem of the Ocean—the first play in the cycle but one of the last plays that Wilson wrote—when it premiered at the Goodman in 2003.  (I felt like the play was a little long when I saw it onstage, but I really enjoyed reading it.)  Gem of the Ocean is set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh at the start of the twentieth century.  It introduces the mystical character of Aunt Ester (who figures in several other plays), as well as themes, locations, and characters who echo throughout the cycle.

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is set in a Pittsburgh boarding house in the second decade of the twentieth century.  At its center is a mysterious man who has come north with his young daughter; he is looking for his wife, who left their homestead after he was captured and held by Joe Turner for seven years.  Music, spirituality, and violence (common elements in Wilson’s plays) intersect in the end.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the third play in the cycle but one of the first written, is the only play in Wilson’s series that doesn’t take place in Pittsburgh.  Set in Chicago in the 1920s, it imagines a recording session with blues singer Ma Rainey and the four members of her band.  The play examines the status of black musicians at this point in history, when their white producers earned the bulk of the profits.  The interplay among the musicians contains a sense of humor that isn’t always a part of Wilson’s terrain.