August Wilson: Connections in the Cycle

Success is often a matter of talent and timing: the right work at the right time in the hands of the right people. That after a long, improbable, improvised apprenticeship as a writer, August Wilson deserved, got and made good use of his lucky breaks is a fairly familiar American story. But what doesn’t happen as often is making a success of success.

August Wilson went from an unknown to a sensation (for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) and a Pulitzer Prize-winner (for Fences) in a few years. But it’s what he did with this success that made the difference.

One crucial move was apparently audacious. He noticed that the few plays he’d written (and a couple in process) were set in different decades. He decided on a goal---to write a play about the African American experience set in every decade of the 20th century. This would be an unprecedented achievement, but for subsequent years that wasn’t as important as what it did for him: it gave him an artistic goal and a guide for his time, that set a dominating context for any other considerations. "I never had to worry about what my next play was going to be and come up with an idea," Wilson said later. "I would just pick a decade and go."

No matter what happened with each play, commercially or within the changing American theatre context, he always had this goal, and he always knew what he was going to do next. Even false starts were easily accommodated, because there were clear but limited alternatives. No matter what did or didn't happen, the task wouldn't be done until all ten plays were completed.

Writing the cycle over a couple of decades changed him, Wilson wrote. The cycle itself changed with him, as he used his increasing craft and growing power as an artist to not only hone in on what was crucial in each new play, but to see the cycle more as a whole, and the relationships of the plays to each other.

The most obvious connections are the characters. Some recur, like Rutherford Selig in Gem of the Ocean, set in 1904, who appears also in Joe Turner's Come and Gone, set in 1911, but written 17 years earlier. (The same actor played him in both Broadway productions--he suggested August wrote the part for him in "Gem" because he liked him in "Joe Turner.")

Then there are families and generations. "Ruby" appears in Seven Guitars, set in 1948, where she meets a man named King Hedley. She returns in 1985 as the mother of the title character in King Hedley II.

But the key character to the whole cycle (as August noted) is the former slave and spiritual healer Aunt Ester Tyler. She was talked about and visited by characters in Two Trains Running, and her death (at age 366) is announced in King Hedley II. She is center stage for Gem of the Ocean, where she takes the young stranger, Citizen Barlow to the undersea City of Bones, which was first evoked by the character Loomis in "Joe Turner." While Aunt Ester and Solly Two Kings kid about getting married, the young Citizen Barlow and Ester's housekeeper and protege, Black Mary, seem to be sparking a romance. Black Mary's brother is Caesar Wilks, the black constable and landlord who is the villain of the piece.

"Gem," the first in the cycle chronologically, was the next to last to be written. The last in the cycle, set in 1997, was the last to be written: Radio Golf. It turned out to be the last play August Wilson was to write. Late in Radio Golf, one character reveals he is the son of Citizen Barlow and Black Mary, who apparently took the name of Esther Tyler. He reveals this to another character who is the grandson of Caesar Wilks. At the heart of this play is a crumbling old house scheduled for demolition. It is the very house where Aunt Ester had lived, and is the location for Gem of the Ocean. In "Golf,"Caesar's grandson even repeats a statement his grandfather made in "Gem," but in a very different cause. (There's also a character who appeared in Two Trains Running, and other connections as well.)

These plays of course make perfect sense without knowing about these connections. But the connections add to the richness and to the meaning. In particular they add a dimension to Radio Golf, because the characters themselves don't seem to realize the importance of that house in their own family history, as well as to the community.

The connections double back on the plays and even create possible new meanings outside the plays. For instance, at the end of "Gem," Citizen takes up the cause of the fallen elder, Solly. Now that we know he and Black Mary did marry, and that she took on Ester's name, it is as if they completed the marriage of Solly and Aunt Ester. (Black Mary taking Ester Tyler's name was foreshadowed--or foretold--in "Gem." "Miss Tyler" passed the name on to her, she told Black Mary, and "If you ever make up your mind I'm gonna pass it on to you."

Which leads to the question of whether the Aunt Ester referred to in the 60s and the 80s was really Black Mary, and even whether Aunt Ester had been a succession of women, who passed on spiritual knowledge. Or did Black Mary take Ester's name just to further repudiate her brother Caesar, who she separates herself from in Gem of the Ocean? Or both?