August Wilson – Fences & Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

*Two stunning, intensely powerful modern classics about race in 20th century America from the legendary Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright August Wilson*

In Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the great blues diva Ma Rainey is due to arrive at a run-down Chicago recording studio with her entourage to cut new sides of old favourites. Waiting for her are the black musicians in her band – and the white owners of the record company. A tense, searing account of racism in jazz-era America that the New Yorker called ‘a genuine work of art’.

Fences centres on Troy Maxson, a garbage collector, an embittered former baseball player and a proud, dominating father, in 1950s Pittsburgh. When college athletic recruiters scout his teenage son, Troy struggles against his young son’s ambition, his wife, who he understands less and less, and his own frustrated dreams.