At the close of a century

WHEN August Wilson wrote his breakthrough success, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” in 1984, he had no idea he had embarked on a cycle of plays that would take more than two decades to complete.

It wasn’t until he was writing “The Piano Lesson,” three plays later, that it dawned on him that by setting his plays in different decades of the 20th century, he was gradually constructing a cycle. It would focus on “the largest issues and ideas that black people faced in those times,” he said in 1986, shortly after he realized what was taking shape.

Many playwrights have had dreams on that scale; few have seen them realized. Yet Wilson’s ambitious goal has been reached. All of the plays have been produced, with eight reaching Broadway. The final play in the cycle, “Radio Golf,” opens Thursday at the Mark Taper Forum.

As the cycle continued, the plays became more sprawling and more referential to one another -- with characters showing up in more than one play. The atmosphere of the neighborhood where Wilson grew up, Pittsburgh’s Hill District -- hardly present in the first two produced plays -- became stronger. Look for a 10-day reading of the entire cycle in February 2007 at New York’s Signature Theatre.

-- Don Shirley

Gem of the Ocean

Set in: 1904

Premiere: Goodman Theatre, Chicago, April 2003

L.A. premiere: Mark Taper Forum, July 2003

Broadway premiere: Dec. 6, 2004

Plot: A young man seeks an old seer’s counsel about a violent incident, while a former Underground Railroad guide frets over his sister and a black constable tries to enforce the white man’s law.

Inside info: This was Wilson’s first play since “Ma Rainey” with a dominant female character, the 285-year-old seer Aunt Ester, who was mentioned but not seen in “Two Trains Running” and “King Hedley II.” Although McClinton directed in L.A., Kenny Leon directed on Broadway. In 1904, Wilson told the Times, “you could walk around and find people who were slaves. I find that incredible.”

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Joe Turner’s Come and Gone

Set in: 1911

Premiere: Yale Repertory Theatre, May 1986

Broadway premiere: March 27, 1988

L.A. premiere: Los Angeles Theatre Center, April 1989

Plot: A mysterious man in search of his wife, accompanied by his young daughter, arrives at a boarding house where a neighbor tries to help him rediscover his identity.

Inside info: Wilson has called this play his favorite. His inspiration came from a photograph of Romare Bearden’s painting “The Millhand’s Lunch Bucket.” The titular character is offstage -- he’s the white man who pressed the leading character into peonage in the South.

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Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Set in: 1927

Premiere: Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven, Conn. April 1984

Broadway premiere: Oct. 11, 1984

L.A. premiere: Los Angeles Theatre Center, June 1987

Plot: In a Chicago recording studio, “Ma” Rainey and her band -- exploited by the white-run music industry -- fall into strife among themselves.

Inside info: The fourth play Wilson wrote was his first to be produced -- and the only play in his 20th century cycle set outside Pittsburgh. Wilson told The Times: “ ‘Ma Rainey’ isn’t about ‘This is what you took from us’ but ‘This is so valuable what you’ve taken from us.’

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The Piano Lesson

Set in: 1936

Premiere: Yale Repertory Theatre, November 1987

L.A. premiere: Doolittle Theatre, January 1990

Broadway premiere: April 16, 1990

Plot: Boy Willie, a sharecropper from the South, wants to sell his family’s ancestral piano. His Pittsburgh sister Berniece insists on keeping it -- the piano has the carved faces of their great-grandfather’s wife and daughter, who were sold in exchange for the piano during the days of slavery.

Inside info: Wilson picked up his second Pulitzer for this story. Skip James’ blues song “Special Delivery” was part of Wilson’s inspiration -- he told the Chicago Sun-Times that he “wanted to write a play like that song -- with the same grace, elegance, power.”

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Seven Guitars

Set in: 1948

Premiere: Goodman Theatre, Chicago, January 1995

L.A. premiere: Ahmanson Theatre, January 1996

Broadway premiere: March 28, 1996

Plot: A group of neighbors in the backyard of a tenement house returns from a funeral, and the play flashes back to the final week of the young singer-songwriter who died.

Inside info: This was the first Wilson production to premiere away from Yale Repertory, which Wilson’s longtime director Lloyd Richards left in 1991. Richards couldn’t direct the premiere -- Walter Dallas did -- but Richards then took over. “All of the things in the play are very necessary, but they all appear to be quite unnecessary,” Wilson told The Times.

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Fences

Set in: 1957

Premiere: Yale Repertory Theatre, May 1985

Broadway premiere: March 26, 1987

L.A. premiere: Doolittle Theatre, September 1988

Plot: A former Negro League baseball player who was born too soon to make the transition to the major leagues now collects garbage and nurses grudges against his athletic 17-year-old son.

Inside info: Probably because of its original star, James Earl Jones, this Pulitzer- and Tony-winning play is considered Wilson’s foremost star vehicle.

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Two Trains Running

Set in: 1969

Premiere: Yale Repertory Theatre, March 1990

L.A. premiere: Doolittle Theatre, January 1992

Broadway premiere: April 13, 1992

Plot: A group of regulars hangs out at a cafe that might be condemned -- or might be bought by the nearby mortuary owner. Romance blossoms between an ex-con and a waitress.

Inside info: This play is more conversation-oriented than most of Wilson’s previous plays. The oral tradition is “how the values of black culture are passed along,” Wilson told the Christian Science Monitor. “The history is not written down; the mythology is not written down.”

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Jitney

Set in: 1977

Premiere: Allegheny Repertory Theatre, Pittsburgh, 1982

Premiere of rewritten version: Pittsburgh Public Theatre, 1996

L.A. premiere of rewritten version: Mark Taper Forum, Feb. 3, 2000

Plot: The owner of an unlicensed cab business faces the threat that his building will be demolished, while his son -- out of prison after 20 years -- seeks a reconciliation.

Inside info: The first play that Wilson wrote for his cycle is the only one of the 10 that never reached Broadway -- although it did play off-Broadway. Although Wilson is known for king-size first drafts, he had to expand the original “Jitney.” He joked to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “If it’s a 90-minute play, no one will know it’s mine.”

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“King Hedley II

Set in: 1985

Premiere: Pittsburgh Public Theatre, December 1999

L.A. premiere: Mark Taper Forum, September 2000

Broadway premiere: May 1, 2001

Plot: The title character, just out of jail, is saving money to open a video store but instead becomes a bank robber.

Inside info: Marion McClinton took over the reins from Lloyd Richards as Wilson’s director with this play, which is set in the same backyard and has two of the same characters as “Seven Guitars.” McClinton said, “I’ve worked on Shakespeare, Beckett and Genet, and they were a walk in the park compared to this play.”

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Radio Golf

Set in: 1997

Premiere: Yale Repertory Theatre, April 2005

L.A. premiere: Mark Taper Forum, Aug. 11, 2005

Plot: While Aunt Ester’s house is scheduled for demolition, Harmond Wilkes II wants to teach kids in the neighborhood how to play golf -- and wants to become Pittsburgh’s first black mayor. His partner helps a white radio investor take advantage of minority ownership tax breaks.

Inside info: Wilson examines the contemporary black middle class. The play includes a character from “Two Trains Running,” two descendants of characters in “Gem of the Ocean,” part of the set from “Jitney” and a speech that was cut from “King Hedley II.”