The Gem of the Ocean: August Wilson, Playwright

      The Mayor was at the theater tonight.  It was a play put on at a local playhouse by a professional company.  With 6 actors involved, the story focused on their interactions, dictated by their history, family relations,  and current events.
    The time frame is 1904, in the City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.   It is a city on the verge of becoming a steel town of world renown.  But in this setting, the over arching topic is the post civil war life of African-Americans in a Northern City.   Like many northern cities, Pittsburgh attracted those Southerners who were former slaves and the offspring of those slaves who sought refuge from the post-Reconstruction era of the former Confederate States.  The intense racism of the period was directed at the new citizens who now could legally vote, own property, and live without the threat of family breakup, poverty, and the complete lack of educational opportunity.
     August Wilson wrote a series of plays, each focused on a certain decade of the 20th century, beginning in 1904(timeline).  This play, "Gem of the Ocean", was completed in 2003, shortly before Wilson died in October, 2005.  His series of 10 plays is called "The Pittsburgh Cycle" for which he received two Pulitzer prizes for drama.