Facing Fences
An interview with director Tim Bond
By Kyle Bass, Fences dramaturg |
Director Tim Bond. Photo by The Post Standard. |
For Director Tim Bond, directing August Wilson's Fences is personal. Bond knew the late
playwright and has committed himself to directing all ten plays of Wilson's 20th Century Cycle,
which chronicles the African American experience in the 20th century. Having already directed
The Piano Lesson, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and Gem of the Ocean at Oregon Shakespeare
Festival (where he served as associate artistic director for 11 seasons), and Jitney at Milwaukee
Repertory Theater, with this production of Fences Tim is halfway to his goal. Tim also directed
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom for Syracuse Stage where he is Producing Artist Director.
In our conversation (excerpted below), Tim speaks candidly about why directing Fences is such
a meaningful journey for him.
KYLE BASS: You and August Wilson crossed paths a number of times, right?
TIM BOND: I would see August at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival quite a bit. Often I would see him
cross the bricks when he was coming to see one of his shows that we did there. He'd see me and say, "Tim,
you got a few minutes?" Of course whatever else I'd be doing, I'd say "Yes. I got time, August." He would
tell me what the next play was that he was working on. I heard the last three or four plays in August's
Cycle that way, with him telling them to me over an hour or two. He'd do a whole soliloquy, or he'd do a
scene between two characters. And he would play it out for me right there on the brick, down in this
courtyard at the Shakespeare Festival. And then he'd say, "What do you think? What do you think about
that?" He was testing it out. He was seeing if it was working. But what was amazing is that the words just
came out of him. It was as if he was telling me a story, like when you're sitting in a barber shop and
someone is like, "Here’s what happened last night and this is what so-and-so said and this is how it all
went down." It was amazing.
KB: You've directed four of the other plays in the cycle…
TB: Ma Rainey twice.
KB: But you’re just now getting around to Fences, perhaps Wilson’s most famous play—certainly his
most produced. What took so long, man?
TB [Laughter]: Well I’ve been offered the opportunity to direct Fences two other times before this,
so the third time's the charm, I guess. And personally it was the right moment for me to do it.
KB: What makes this the right play and the right time for you?
TB: Fences deals with someone who’s essentially the same age as me, Troy Maxson [the play’s main
character]. I feel like I understand this character from a different standpoint as a father now than I
might have ten years ago when I was first offered the play. Troy has a teenage son [Cory], and my son
Travis is the same age as Cory, seventeen. And I understand more the father-son relationship and the
strain of that. I'm also dealing with my father, who's living with me in Syracuse. And Troy deals with
his history with his father. And I also love baseball.
KB: Did you play?
TB: When I was kid, baseball was my thing, man. I was sure I was going to be a professional baseball
player; it's all I wanted to be until I was about thirteen years old. And Troy has that dream as well,
and I understand that. I certainly had the opportunity, where as Troy, during his time when he was playing
ball, he did not have that opportunity.
KB: A dead-end dream.
TB: Right. But I’ve come to understand, now through the years, that my father never supported my baseball
playing. He never went to a pro baseball game. Never listened to a pro baseball game on the radio or watched
one on TV. All the time I was a kid I never understood it. Only recently did he tell me the reason why he
was so damn mad when he was growing up. There had to be a segregated league. A Negro baseball league. It was
about blacks not being permitted to have equal opportunity. So my dad never wanted anything to do with it. I
never knew that about him. So there’s that connection for me to the play.
KB: But you father had other opportunities that someone like Troy couldn’t have dreamed of.
TB: That’s true. My father had broken the color barrier as a college president. He was the first African
American president of a major university west of the Mississippi. But he still carried that scar from his
youth a person of color. Like the scar Troy is carrying. I understand that now.
KB: Fences premiered in 1985 at Yale Rep, and then on Broadway in ’87. This is the 25th anniversary of
the play. So what is its relevance now in 2010? What does the play say in 2010 that it might not have
expressed in 1985 or 87?
TB: Well, I don’t know if it’s saying anything now that it didn’t say then. But in ’85 and’87, you still
knew there were barriers that needed to be broken and there were still fences around opportunities for African
Americans. And I think there’s, among some folks, the belief that now that Obama’s been elected the first black
president we can’t talk about those things anymore because somehow we’ve overcome. But we haven’t overcome.
There are still significant institutional and societal fences around opportunities for African Americans and
other people of color in this country. But it’s also about facing our issues around class and educational
opportunities. I think it’s important to remember that while we’ve made steps forward, there are many people
who’ve still been left out of the equation of the American Dream. That’s important to keep in front of us.
KB: Wilson was famous for saying he wrote his plays for African American audiences. As an African American,
does Wilson’s claim sit in your mind at all as you approach this play?
TB: I’m not a writer, but I think a writer has to have a very clear place they’re writing from and reason
for telling the story they’re telling. How that then becomes open to any number of bold interpretations, how
theater-makers make connections to what wasn’t necessarily the initial intention or focus of the writing, is
what makes this art form so fluid and impactful. I think if it’s a classic story that taps into some huge
human and societal questions, then it’s going to have access points for people from many backgrounds. So, if
in his mind August wrote for a black audience, that does not mean it’s not accessible to audiences from many
backgrounds. And for me as both a producer and a director, I want it to be seen by many audiences. But my
goal, or my focus, in directing it is to have it speak true to me. And if it speaks true to me, being a human
being, I suspect it will be true to many people.
KB: You mentioned your son earlier. What do you think Travis will take away from seeing your production of
Fences?
TB [Laugher]: I’ve given up trying to read the mind a seventeen-year-old.
KB: What do you hope he takes away from the play?
TB: What do I hope? I hope he takes away an understanding of some of our shared history, as he is part
African American, of the struggles that Troy’s generation went through. To know a time when he couldn’t be
president of the United States. When you couldn’t even get on a professional baseball team because of the
color of your skin. And what does it mean to be a man? What’s his responsibility? What are your duties? What
are the relationships we have with our sons? With our wives? With our friends? With your community? With your
own dignity. And of course, my son, I’m sure, at age seventeen, is trying to figure that out. Part of what
that is, is you have to kill off your father, in a way, to become that—your own man.
KB: "My son, my executioner."
TB: Exactly. That's part of Troy and Cory's conflict. A son's got to say, "Okay that's the way you did it.
I'm not doing it that way. I'm doing it my own way. You taught me to be my own man. Well, I'm being my own
man. Get out of my way." As a father to a son, I'm aware of that. I'm not sure that Travis knows that I'm
aware of that, but by doing this play maybe he'll look and go "Wow, so pop directed that play. Maybe he gets
it." Well, he'll get this when he's 25 maybe. Maybe when he has a son of his own. But it'd great if he was
able to appreciate that I know how hard it is as a seventeen-year-old dealing with you father because I
remember going through it with my dad. I don't know if I was aware of it at that time. So maybe this will
give him a little chance to have a little self-reflection before he leaves my house, heads off to college and
on to the rest of his journey."
© Kyle Bass, 2010
