Photograph from 1997 production of Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Fences by August Wilson at Penumbra Theatre Company in St. Paul Minnesota. Penumbra Theatre Archives.

Photograph from 1997 production of Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Fences by August Wilson at Penumbra Theatre Company in St. Paul Minnesota. Penumbra Theatre Archives.

Fences, part of Wilson’s “20th Century Cycle,” was written when Wilson was a Penumbra Theatre company member and chronicles the 1950s through the story of a gifted African American baseball player who gets shut out of the game and of history because of racial prejudice. Left to right: With James A. Williams, William Byrd Wilkins, and Lou Bellamy, also the founder of Penumbra Theatre Company and director of the production.