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CITY ON A HILL PRESS


BY Jimmy Aquino
Arts Desk Editor


UC Santa Cruz’s African American Theater Arts Troupe (AATAT) recently put on another solid play this year with their beautifully acted, uplifting production of August Wilson’s acclaimed 1985 Play of the Month.

After Getting my first taste of the AATAT when I saw their absorbing adaptation of Charles Fuller’s A Soldier’s Play last winter, I looked forward to what famous African American play troupe director Don Williams and his company would adapt next. This year, the trope chose Wilson’s Fences, when actually won a Pulitzer Prize back in 1987.

 

Set mostly in 1957 in working-class Pittsburgh, the play centers on Troy Maxon (Aaron Woods, a local community-theater actor), a former professional baseball player forced to grapple with a changing world (as well as a changing racial climate) when his son Cory (UCSC Junior Corey Saucier) wants to accept an athletic scholarship. Bitter over the major league’s rejection of his talents because of his skin color, Troy fears his son will experience the same hardships he endured. He forces Troy to stay in Pittsburgh and work, and tensions erupt between father and son.

Directed by Williams, the production boasts an impressive set by designer Dan Beck (the centerpiece is that front portion of a bluecollar 1950’s house, because all the action takes place on Troy’s porch), but the performances by actors like Woods and Saucier are even more impressive. Woods adeptly portrays Troy’s impressive. Woods adeptly portrays Troy’s short temper and obsession with the past and has some great chemistry with Jujuana S. Williams as his wide Rose (she played Rose at the Feb. 22 performance I saw, while Nandi Ellis played her in previous performances), while Saucier is convincing as Troy’s son.

 

It’s magnificent to see companies like the AATAT making efforts to give actors of color an opportunity to shine in a local theater scene that often gives them the shaft. Those Regent bastards kissing Pete Wilson’s opportunistic ass may have sicked the dreaded Prop 209 on the universities to pacify us, but 209’s unfortunate passing has made theater artists and groups of color stronger and more visible than ever before. Don Williams recently told me that the struggle to get the UCSC Theater Arts board to fund a 1997 play called By the Dawn’s Early Light, written by one of his students, Drew-Saenz-Hudson, was a tough one behind the scenes. According to Williams, he fought hard to get the higher-ups to support the play, and it ended up becoming the first Latino-themed play funded by the Board in the Campus’ History.

When ethnic studies programs are left to wither by the UCSC administration where else can the campus community go to learn about historical and social issues involving people of color? Well, there are some books, television programs, and films outside of classes that can educate them but they don’t allow students and citizens in the community to interact with each other in a way that school or theater allows. Productions such as the AATAT’s Fences are our last hope in a part of America where replacing the "c" in "America" with three k’s is starting to not seem like a bad idea to some people.

Fences will be presented at Monterey Peninsula College (MPC) at 8 p.m. March 4-7, 12-14, and 20-21 and at 2p.m. on March 8, 15, and 22. For MPC ticket info, call (831)646-4213.


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