Fences

Troy argues that he prevented Cory from playing college football to protect him from the disappointment Troy himself experienced. Is this protection or sabotage? Can it be both?

Bono says some people build fences to keep things out, and other people build fences to keep things in. By the end of the play, which is Troy's fence doing — and for whom?

Rose says she buried herself inside Troy's life for eighteen years. But she clearly had agency — she made choices. Is Rose's speech a revelation of victimhood or a claim of authorship over her own sacrifice?

Wilson gives Troy a completely developed account of why he became who he is — the sharecropper father, the prison years, the Negro Leagues, the color line. Does this explanation excuse Troy? Does Wilson want it to?

Troy is wrong that Cory has no future in football — Cory could have gotten a scholarship. But Troy was right that the world denied him specifically. How does Wilson use generational difference to make both men right and both men wrong?

Gabriel believes he is the Archangel Gabriel and that his trumpet will open the gates of heaven for Troy. The play's final image suggests he is right. How do you read this: literally, symbolically, or both? What is Wilson claiming about how truth works?

Troy's affair with Alberta is described in his own words as giving him relief from the weight of his life. Is this a recognizable human experience — seeking escape from unbearable pressure — or is it self-justifying nonsense? Does the play force you to choose?

Compare Troy's relationship with Lyons to his relationship with Cory. Troy wasn't there for Lyons's childhood; he is present but blocking for Cory's. Which son is more damaged? Is presence or absence more destructive?

Rose takes in Raynell — the child of her husband's affair — rather than reject her. Why does Wilson make Rose do this? What does it tell us about Rose's character, and what does it tell us about what motherhood means in the play?

Troy never finishes the fence until after the affair is exposed. What is the relationship between his emotional dishonesty and the incompleteness of the physical structure? Why does finishing the fence come after the worst damage is done?

Wilson sets the play entirely in the Maxson backyard. Nothing happens offstage that we don't hear about through dialogue. What does this confinement do to the emotional experience of the play?

Troy uses baseball metaphors for everything: Death is a fastball, warnings are strikes, expulsion is the third out. What does it mean that the only language Troy has for life comes from the sport he was denied?

Cory refuses to attend Troy's funeral. Rose changes his mind with one speech. What does Rose say that Cory cannot counter? And is she right?

Wilson was writing about the 1950s in 1985. The Civil Rights Movement had happened in between. How does writing about a segregated past from a desegregated present change what the play can say about race?

Compare Troy Maxson to Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. Both are men who destroy their sons while trying to protect them from failure. What role does race play in making these two stories different — not just in content but in what each author is able to say?

August Wilson insisted that his plays be produced and directed by Black artists. He publicly opposed the 1997 film version of Fences being directed by a white director. What is at stake in that argument? Does it change how you experience the play?

The play ends with Gabriel's dance opening the gates of heaven for Troy. Troy spent the entire play building barriers. Is it fitting that his entry into eternity is opened by the brother he institutionalized? What is Wilson saying about who has the power to grant grace?

Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle covers one decade of Black American life per play, from the 1900s to the 1990s. Knowing that Fences is the 1950s play in a ten-play arc — what does placing Troy Maxson in the 1950s specifically say about that decade in Black American history?

Rose sings in the play. Raynell sings. Cory and Raynell sing together at the end. Troy is described as someone who sang. How does Wilson use song — not just as characterization but as structural element — to organize the play's emotional architecture?

Troy tells Rose: 'I got to give up the one thing that made me feel like a man.' He is talking about Alberta. What does Wilson want you to feel about that line — sympathy, contempt, or something more complicated?

The play's title is 'Fences' — plural. By the end of the play, how many different fences have been built or described? Which is the most important one, and why?

Lyons is a musician who borrows ten dollars to go hear music that night. Troy dismisses music as something you can't eat. Eight years later, Lyons has been arrested for check fraud. Wilson doesn't connect these facts explicitly. Should you?

Troy's mother left when he was eight years old. He barely mentions her. Is her absence an absence in the play, or does Wilson make something out of the silence?

If you were updating Fences to the present day, what would Troy Maxson's blocked dream be? What system would have closed the door on him? And what would his fence look like?

Rose raises Raynell. At the end of the play, Raynell is healthy, curious, growing things. What does Wilson suggest about what happens when someone sacrifices themselves for an innocent child, even at great personal cost?

Wilson uses the yard and the fence to do what a novelist might do with a detailed interior life. How does making the set the symbol — rather than a character's thoughts — change how you experience the play's emotional argument?

Troy says he made a deal with Death when he was sick: he told Death to take him when he's ready, not before. Is this delusion, metaphor, or something Wilson treats as literally true in the world of the play?

The Hill District of Pittsburgh where Fences is set was later demolished by urban renewal projects. Does knowing this change how you read the play's attachment to the yard, the house, the neighborhood?

Wilson said the blues was the wellspring of African-American culture. Find three moments in Fences where the dialogue is structured like a blues performance — with repetition, call-and-response, or a refrain. What does the blues structure do to those moments?

Viola Davis said in her Tony Award speech that playing Rose Maxson was 'the role of a lifetime.' Denzel Washington has performed as Troy Maxson multiple times across his career. What is it about these two characters that makes them defining roles for Black actors? What does that tell you about the play's place in the culture?