Bitterness fences in play’s main character
e_SDLqIt takes everything out of me. This is a heavy role, and Greg (Williams) is the kind of director who tells us not to imitate but to find our own characters. So, I started thinking about Troy and what he’s thinking and why. ” George meyer, on playing Troy
Bitterness has a way of blighting a life, picking it apart like a swarm of locusts and leaving little in its wake.
Sadly, Troy Maxson is too narrow in his point of view to see it.
“He says at one point that Hank Aaron isn’t anyone and Jackie Robinson isn’t anyone,” George Meyer said.
“His view is so narrow that he can’t see past his own life. And I think there’s some jealousy there.”
Maybe lots of jealousy, because Troy was a great baseball player in his youth but could not break from the Negro Baseball League into Major League Baseball because of the color barrier.
Troy is a 53-year-old sanitation worker in the 1950s when New Venture Theatre opens the curtain at the beginning of its production of August Wilson’s Fences.
The play opens on Friday, Feb. 10, and runs for three performances.
And Meyer plays Troy, who prides himself on being a provider for his family, yet mourns an opportunity denied him because of the racial barrier.
“But things are changing,” Greg Williams Jr. said.
Williams is New Venture Theatre’s founder and artistic director, as well as director of this production.
“The trouble is Troy can’t see past his own life,” Williams said.
“He can’t see the changes and the opportunities opening up for African Americans, because he didn’t have those opportunities.”
And he can’t accept the fact that major colleges are interested in offering his son Cory a football scholarship.
“He tells his son to forget about sports and get a trade,” Meyer said.
“He says, ‘No one can take a trade away from you, and you can do something better than picking up other people’s garbage.’ So, in his own way, he wants better for his son, and he’s protecting Cory. But he goes about protecting Cory the wrong way.”
Wilson’s play premiered in 1983 in the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Conn. Its Broadway debut came four years later on March 26, 1987, in the 46th Street Theatre. James Earl Jones starred as Troy in that production.
Denzel Washington stepped into the role in Fences’ 2010 Broadway revival.
Williams remembers reading the play while a student at Tara High School, then taking a trip across town to see Swine Palace’s production. That was in 2002.
“We were reading plays by Shakespeare in class, and I remember going to my teacher and asking, ‘Are there any plays for black people?’,” Williams said.
He laughs.
“I just put it out there,” he continued. “And she handed me a copy of August Wilson’s Fences.”
Williams was instantly captivated by the story, and he fell in love with Wilson’s use of the English language.
“It’s poetic,” he said. “He was a genius with the language. And I liked how he wrote about African-Americans, especially African-American families. He shows that there is something more going on in African-American families outside of the Civil Rights Movement.”
And in Fences, Americans are experiencing the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement.
“There are different sides to Troy,” Meyer said. “He’s likeable in that he deeply loves his wife, but then there’s the side that you don’t like — the side where he validates cheating on his wife.”
Meyer refers to Troy’s affair with a woman named Alberta. The audience never sees Alberta but is introduced to the product of the affair, Troy’s 7-year-old daughter Raynell. Alberta adies in childbirth, and Rose accepts the duty of being Raynell’s mother, the point being that her love for Troy runs so deep that she’ll do this.
Troy and Rose, meantime, are parents to Cory, who hopes to win a football scholarship and go to college.
“At one point, Cory asks Troy, ‘Why don’t you like me?’,” Meyer said. “He says, ‘I don’t have to like you. I provide for you.’ Troy sees himself as a provider. He’s doing what he’s supposed to do as a father, and that’s being a provider. That’s the measure of his love.”
Troy doesn’t feel the need to speak his love in any way. He doesn’t even see it necessary to feel love. His role as provider is enough.
“And he is a step up from his father,” Meyer said.
“Troy’s father saw his own role as a provider, but he also beat Troy at every turn. Troy learned from that and made the decision not to beat his own son. So, he sees himself as better than his own father because of that.”
“But he also uses his role as provider every chance he gets,” Williams said. “He holds it over his family’s heads. He’s not happy, and he doesn’t want anyone around him to be happy, either.”
Bitterness eats away at him, at his life, blinding him from the opportunity presenting itself to Cory.
It’s a hard-nosed mind set, no doubt, one that’s proved exhausting for Meyer. Troy Maxson is his first theatrical role. He’s played parts in church plays and skits but has never acted in theater.
“My cousin’s wife is a volunteer with New Venture, and she came by to ask my business to take out an ad in the program for one of the plays,” Meyer said.
“Then she said I should come audition. She kept encouraging me.”
Auditions were announced for Fences, and Meyer thought he might have a chance at one of the supporting roles. But then the unthinkable happened.
“I was offered the role of Troy,” he said.
“And I remember screaming.”
He laughs. That was then. This is now, and playing Troy has had both its rewards and its downside.
Now, don’t take this wrong. Meyer isn’t complaining at all. But Troy does send him home exhausted after every rehearsal.
“It takes everything out of me,” Meyer said. “This is a heavy role, and Greg is the kind of director who tells us not to imitate but to find our own characters. So, I started thinking about Troy and what he’s thinking and why.”
Now, the play’s title refers to an unfinished fence in Troy’s yard, one that serves as a key allegory for Troy later in the story. Of course, audience member
s will have to see Fences to find out if Troy finishes building the fence.
Or if he allows bitterness to get the best of him.
Cast: George Meyer, Troy; Denisa S. Joshua, Rose; Cliford Johnson, Corey; Byron Wade, Bono; Erron R. Johnson, Gabriel; Michael Boyd, Lyons; Kenadi Conrad, Raynell
DIRECTOR: Greg Williams Jr.