August Wilson: Century Cycle (10 book box set), by August Wilson

Description

August Wilson’s Century Cycle is “one of the most ambitious dramatic projects ever undertaken.” (The New York Times) With it, Wilson dramatizes the African American experience and heritage in the twentieth century, with a play for each decade, almost all set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, where he grew up. Wilson’s extraordinary lifework–completed just before his death in October 2005–is presented here for the first time in its entirety.

“Art is beholden to the kiln in which the artist was fired. Before I am anything, a man or a playwright, I am an African American. . . . The cycle of plays that I have been writing since 1979 is my attempt to represent that culture on stage in all its richness and fullness and to demonstrate its ability to sustain us in all areas of human life and endeavor and through profound moments of our history in which the larger society has thought less of us than we have thought of ourselves.

The characters in the plays still place their faith in America’s willingness to live up to the meaning of her creed. It is this belief in America’s honor that allows them to pursue the American Dream even as it remains elusive. . . . They shout, they argue, they wrestle with love, honor, duty, betrayal; they have loud voices and big hearts; they demand justice, they love, they laugh, they cry, they murder, and they embrace life with zest and vigor. . . . In all the plays, the characters remain pointed towards the future, their pockets lined with fresh hope and an abiding faith in their own abilities and their own heroics.”–August Wilson

August Wilson’s “century cycle” encapsulates ten of his plays, each dramatizing a different decade of African American life in the 20th century—as a unified whole, the boxed set looks and feels like it could indeed hold a century of cultural memory inside of it.

Included in the set are

1. Gem of the Ocean
2. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
3. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
4. The Piano Lesson
5. Seven Guitars
6. Fences
7. Two Trains Running
8. Jitney
9. King Hedley the II
10. Radio Golf