Fences

A black garbage collector named Troy Maxson in 1950s Pittsburgh is bitter that baseball's color barrier was only broken after his own heyday in the Negro Leagues, Maxson is prone to taking out his frustrations on his loved ones.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson returns home to the Hill District of Pittsburgh in 1990 to review his life and career. Archival footage and interviews with Wilson, former New York Times theater critic Frank Rich, Rob Penny, fellow writers, and others provide insights into the African American experience, from the Great Black Migration to more recent times. Scenes from his plays "Jitney," "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," "Fences," "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," and "Two Trains Running" reveal the impact of the oral tradition and the blues on Wilson's poetic prose.