As a young child, I had a very sloppy grip on the truth. I often think this is true for a lot of writers. While at five or six, many children begin to get a firm grip on the concrete details of life: there is no Father Christmas, there is no monster lurking under our beds, there are no dragons waiting to be slain—writers aren’t quite so ready to give up the story. After all, that’s where the marrow of life is juiciest. And as any writer can tell you, a good story doesn’t need a whole lot of truth. If you choose the right beginning, leave out the awkward middle, add a few exciting twists and turns (and stop just before any pesky consequences arrive), you can spin a yarn that will keep everyone on the edge of their seats.

But learning to find the fuzzy edge between narrating yourself into a good story and telling a lie comes with an even more important lesson: if we aren’t careful, we’ll confuse our stories for the truth. If we are busy telling the tale of The Put-Upon Mother, we might never see the village around us ready to offer a helping hand. If we are committed to the romance of The Damsel in Distress, we might never notice the way our white knight waves a red flag.

In August Wilson’s drama Fences, Troy, the patriarch of the Maxson family, may not be a writer, but he is a natural-born bard who spends much of his life weaving grand autobiographical tales. And his big-fish stories aren’t entirely untrue. He really did survive a difficult childhood. He really did go to prison. He really did play Negro League baseball. He really did provide financially for his family. But truth, like any good story, depends on where you choose to put the emphasis. Troy has spent so long casting himself as the hero, the victim, the provider and the survivor that he can no longer see the real life unfolding beyond the edges of his own mythology. Whilst he’s busy becoming an archetype, his wife and sons are becoming people in their own right, with dreams and disappointments that do not fit into the story he has written for them.

Fences is one of ten plays in August Wilson’s American Century Cycle, an ambitious body of work chronicling Black American life across each decade of the twentieth century. Set between 1957 and 1965, it won Wilson the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1987 and has become one of his best-known works. This new production, directed by Daniel Bailey, is a co-production between Leeds Playhouse, Headlong, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre and HOME Manchester, and marks the first major UK revival of the play in more than a decade before touring nationally. At its centre is Troy Maxson, a former Negro League baseball player now working as a binman in Pittsburgh, where he lives with his wife Rose and teenage son Cory. When Cory is recruited to play football, father and son lock horns over what opportunity looks like for a young Black man in a changing America. As the tales of old disappointments begin pressing against the reality of new ambitions, the Maxson family is forced to reckon with the collateral damage of living inside a myth that has begun to overshadow the truth.

To see my full review, please visit Northern Arts Review

See you in the shadows my loves,

Sean x