In conjunction with the recent Oscar ceremony, the August Wilson Center, 980 Liberty Ave., Pittsburgh, is offering a close-up look at props and costumes, a slide show featuring extras in the movie and videos of interviews with Paramount Pictures’ “Fences” producer/director and star Denzel Washington and the late playwright August Wilson, a Pittsburgh native. “Fences,” the story of a black family’s generational conflict in the 1950s, was filmed at several locations in the city. Viola Davis won the Academy Award for best supporting actress. Other Oscar nominees from “Fences” were Washington, Scott Rudin and Todd Black as producers of the best picture; Washington, best actor; and Wilson, best writing of an adapted screenplay. Wilson, who wrote a play for each decade of the 20th century known as the Pittsburgh Cycle, won two Pulitzer Prizes for drama. He wrote the screenplay for “Fences” before his death in 2005. Above, a mural of actors Denzel Washington, who plays Troy Maxson, and Stephen Henderson as Jim Bono, both Pittsburgh refuse workers returning from a day on the job in “Fences,” is displayed at the August Wilson Center, next to a recreation of the Maxson family’s back porch. Also pictured is the house dress, apron and cross necklace Davis wore in a dramatic scene in “Fences” as Rose Lee Maxson. There is no charge to enter the first-floor gallery exhibit, which runs through March 10.
Barbara S. Miller/Observer-Reporter