‘Fences’ stars thrilled that Wilson speaks to every generation

If you’ve ever attended a production of an August Wilson play (Chicago theaters such as the Goodman have long staged his works to critical acclaim), you know it’s an evening of theater that will stay with you long after the final curtain. The characters you’ve gotten to know are some of the most human you will ever encounter in a play. And while they are the voices of the African-American experience in each decade of the 20th century, their words and actions speak to us all.

That unforgettable experience now awaits on the big screen, thanks to the Golden Globe- (and no doubt soon to be Oscar-nominated) film of Wilson’s 1987 Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning drama “Fences.”

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From a screenplay by Wilson, “Fences,” directed by Denzel Washington, tells the story of Troy Maxon, a 1950s Pittsburgh garbageman (played by Washington) who once showed promise as a young baseball player but was too young — and black — and was too old by the time the Major Leagues began to admit black players. It’s that dream of “what could have been” that tears at him and affects his relationships with his devoted wife Rose (Viola Davis) and 17-year-old son Cory (Jovan Adepo), who has a shot at a college scholarship to play football. Also tested are his relationships with his best friend and co-worker Jim Bono (Stephen McKinley Henderson), and with the thirtysomething Lyons (Russell Hornsby), his son from a prior relationship, who is carving out a quasi-career as a local jazz musician.

Washington, Henderson and Davis are reprising their stage roles in the film, having starred together in the Broadway revival of “Fences” in 2010. (Washington is committed to producing the other nine plays in Wilson’s “20th Century Cycle” for HBO.) How does the work of Wilson (who died in 2005 at the age of 55) transfer from the stage to the big and small screen?

“It was a joy because it releases you from the responsibility of making sure the back row hears as articulately as the front row,” Henderson said, during a recent chat in Chicago. “Broadway houses are big houses and they have a balcony. And you craft your work knowing those [parameters] are there. All that goes away once you get to film it and you get to come back down to the life level of truth. You can be as intimate as you can be, and this is quite an intimate work.”

Henderson and Washington’s onscreen chemistry no doubt benefitted from that Broadway experience, though it was also an entirely new journey for the actors, Henderson said.

“You always have to revisit the characters as new, even from night to night on the stage. You have to live it as if you never lived it before,” Henderson said, smiling. “It’s been six years since Broadway. But because you’re older and you have more experiences, the text comes at you in a different way. Things alter you as a person. And it all comes out in your work in a new way.”

Henderson is no stranger to Chicago’s stages, having starred at the Goodman in Wilson’s “Jitney” in 1999 (the only Wilson play yet to be staged on Broadway). He has since become one of the leading interpreters of Wilson’s body of work. There is an appeal to the playwright’s work that Henderson finds both irresistible — and familiar.

“It’s like visiting your ancestors, visiting your family members, the ones you didn’t know, because Wilson writes one play for each of the decades of the 20th century,” Henderson said. “The people who raised me [in Kansas City, Missouri] were born at the turn of the century. So, the 20th century voices he wrote about, I heard them, even if it was in the crib. [Laughs] And definitely growing up in the 1950s, I heard them. [Wilson’s dialogue] is like having an audience with your ancestors, with your elders. It’s like looking at pictures in a family album, maybe pictures you never got to have. You see those costumes, and you start seeing the familiar, saying things like, ‘Oh there, that’s my uncle,’ from [Wilson’s] ‘Seven Guitars’ period.

“The language of Wilson is the language of your black ancestors, but he elevates it, because he’s a poet,” Henderson continued. “You listen to the blues, for example, and Wilson’s language has a bit of what I call blues iambic. … You just follow the thought groups and the breath groups. Take a breath when the thought allows you to take it; don’t play to the punctuation, don’t stop because there’s a period there or a comma there. And there’s love underneath it all. All these characters love each other, especially in this particular play, and consequently they hurt each other terribly because of it.”

For Adepo, working on “Fences” with this cast was the chance of a lifetime. Being able to bring Wilson’s words to life — equally substantive.

“I was familiar with his work,” the 28-year-old Adepo said during the same chat with Henderson. “I had an idea of just how rich the material is. I think any young actor would love to be exposed to any of Wilson’s plays. Just getting the chance to participate in this production and playing Cory was definitely a blessing. … I was so intimidated early on to be working with these gentlemen and Viola and they were completely open and more than happy to help me and shepherd me through the process. I learned so much from all of them. Viola is brilliant in her role [as a strong woman and nurturing mother]. As an actress, she’s totally professional and definitely nurturing. That’s just in her makeup. She helped me explore so many elements of Cory.”

In the film, Cory is at a crossroads, that moment in life when boy decides it’s time to stand up and proclaim himself a man. The scene in which he finally stands up to Troy is one of the most powerful in the film.

“I think in some sense that’s a moment that every young man goes through in his life,” Adepo said. “It’s that ‘fight or flight’ moment that I totally understand. If Cory doesn’t establish himself as a young man who’s fully able to take care of himself, then Troy’s never going to respect him. … I definitely channeled my experiences with my father, which were no way as severe as Tory and Cory’s, but they were every bit as important and significant for me coming in to my own as an adult. [laughs] I’ve had quite a few moments like that, where you might have responded differently than how your father expected you to when he asked you to do something.”

The film was shot, Henderson said, pretty much in sequence (almost unheard of in filmmaking), rendering scenes as seamless as they are riveting. The script adhered to the stage version, or as Henderson put it: “It’s straight, no chaser.”

“The length of a take varied, based on how things happened,” Henderson said. “It wasn’t planned to do any long, theatrical kind of takes; Denzel knew what he wanted to capture and he took care of everybody else first, then turned the camera on himself.”

Adepo also hopes that the film will help young actors of his generation tune into Wilson’s work.

“The messages he speaks in all his plays are timeless,” Adepo said, “and people of my generation can absolutely relate to them.”