Phylicia Rashad is heading back to downtown Los Angeles for her next directing project. She’ll take the helm of a new production of August Wilson’s Fences at Center Theatre Group, with performances running May 26 through July 3, 2027 at the Mark Taper Forum.
Set in segregated Pittsburgh in the 1950s, Fences follows Troy Maxson, a former Negro League baseball star now working as a sanitation worker after being shut out of the majors in his prime. His bitterness over that lost opportunity begins to ripple through his family, straining his relationship with his wife Rose and his son Cory, who’s chasing his own shot at a professional baseball career.
This isn’t new territory for Rashad. The Tony winning actress, inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 2016, has a long history with CTG both as a director and performer, having previously directed A Raisin in the Sun, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Immediate Family, and Blues for an Alabama Sky, and appearing onstage at the Taper in Head of Passes. She made her Broadway directorial debut last season with Purpose, which went on to win the Tony for Best Play.
With Fences, CTG completes its staging of all ten plays in Wilson’s Century Cycle, a milestone the theater has been building toward for years.
Rashad said she has deep admiration for Wilson’s body of work, having both performed in and directed several of his plays over her career. She described his plays as offering a vital reflection of human dignity, shared history, and spiritual depth, and said she’s thrilled to return to the Mark Taper Forum, a venue she has her own history with, this time to direct one of his greatest works.
CTG Artistic Director Snehal Desai called it a meaningful milestone to reach with Rashad, someone he described as an artist of extraordinary grace and stature, and noted the timing feels especially fitting as it coincides with CTG’s 60th anniversary.
Fences has a rich history on stage and screen. It premiered at Yale Repertory Theatre in 1985 before moving to Broadway in 1987, where James Earl Jones won a Tony for the lead role. A 2010 Broadway revival starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis later became the basis for a 2016 film adaptation, also starring Washington and Davis, part of Washington’s larger effort to bring Wilson’s full Century Cycle to film. That effort has continued with adaptations of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and The Piano Lesson, with Joe Turner’s Come and Gone reportedly next in line. The film version of Fences was named one of the year’s ten best by the American Film Institute and earned Davis an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, along with a Best Picture nomination.
Tickets are available at CenterTheatreGroup.org.