Gem of the Ocean

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Gem of the Ocean is a play by Pulitzer Prize winner August Wilson.

It is the first installment of his decade-by-decade, ten-play chronicle, often called The Pittsburgh Cycle, dramatizing the African-American experience in the twentieth century.

The play is set in 1904 at 1839 Wylie Avenue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's Hill District. Aunt Esther, the drama’s 287-year-old fiery matriarch, welcomes into her home Solly Two Kings, who was born into slavery and scouted for the Union Army, and Citizen Barlow, a young man from Alabama searching for a new life. Citizen Barlow is in search of redemption. Aunt Esther is not too old to heal, and she guides him on a soaring, lyrical journey of spiritual awakening to the City of Bones.

The play's title alludes to a patriotic hymn then popular in America, Columbia, Gem of the Ocean.

In 2004 and 2005, the play ran at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway and received five Tony Award nominations. Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote of the play: “A swelling battle hymn of transporting beauty. Theatergoers who have followed August Wilson’s career will find in Gem a touchstone for everything else he has written".

[edit] External link

• Gem of the Ocean at The Internet Broadway Database
• NY Times Review Accessed 14 March 2007

[edit] References

• Wilson, August (2006). Gem of the Ocean. New York: Theatre Communications Group. ISBN 1-55936-280-4.