Set in 1957, the backyard of a two-story brick house in Pittsburgh becomes the backdrop for the dramatic tension of Fences, and the strained relationship between Troy, a former Negro League baseball player turned sanitation worker, and his wife and son.

Fences is Wilson’s most revered play, exploring themes of social movement, racial relations, and masculine stoicism of the 1950s. Fences would be little without its true tragic hero whose authoritative control of his household does little to win sides with the audience. With that said, Wilson sprinkles in dialogue of Troy’s past as a sharecropper, prisoner, and baseball player, and all of these experiences reflect societal injustice and severe obstacles that mold his life experience. Samuel G. Freedman, author and professor, posits that “most audaciously of all, August Wilson has made America see Troy Maxson, in all his precise and explicit blackness, as one of our fathers.” In doing so, by the close of the curtain, audiences are forced to decide if Troy should ultimately receive their pity after the tragic decisions he makes.