Phylicia Rashad attends the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's opening night gala at New York City Center on Dec. 4, 2024. (Photo by John Nacion/Getty Images) Phylicia Rashad is heading to downtown Los Angeles for her next directing project.
The multi-hyphenate talent has been tapped to direct an adaptation of August Wilson’s award-winning classic Fences at Mark Taper Forum. The production will be mounted at the Center Theatre Group venue from May 26-July 3, 2027.
Set in segregated Pittsburgh in the 1950s, Fences focuses on Troy Maxson, a former Negro League baseball star who finds himself scraping together a living as a sanitation worker. His bitterness and anger soon start to cause ripple effects inside the home he shares with wife Rose and son Cory, who is seeking his own pro baseball career. Per an official logline, Fences “explores the walls we build around ourselves and our loved ones, while also illuminating one family’s struggles in a racist society.”
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The gig reunites Rashad with CTG, for whom she has worked as both a director and actress across such productions as A Raisin in the Sun, another Wilson adaptation in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Immediate Family, Blues for an Alabama Sky and Head of Passes. It also has significance for CTG: With the production, L.A.’s artistic operation completes the “Century Cycle” after having previously staged Wilson’s other nine plays of the cycle.
“I have deep admiration for the theatrical canon of August Wilson, having performed in one and directed many of his plays over the course of my career,” Rashad says. “At their core, his plays offer a vital reflection of human dignity, shared history and spiritual depth, and have become, for good reason, some of the most highly regarded and produced works in the history of the American theater. I am thrilled to return once again to the Mark Taper Forum, where I have my own shared history, this time to direct one of his greatest plays. I look forward to sharing Fences with Los Angeles next summer.”
Adds Snehal Desai, who serves as Brindell and Milton Gottlieb artistic director: “There is something deeply moving about reaching this milestone with Phylicia — an artist of extraordinary grace, vision and stature — bringing Wilson’s words to life on the Taper stage. One legend illuminating the work of another, in a theatre that has long been a home for groundbreaking American stories. And to have these histories converge in Los Angeles on the eve of CTG’s 60th anniversary feels especially meaningful — a celebration not only of where we have been, but of the artists, stories and audiences who will carry us into the next 60 years.”
Fences has a long history of adaptations from stages to screens. Notably, in 2016, it was adapted by Denzel Washington who directed a version starring himself opposite Viola Davis. Both Davis and Washington were nominated for Academy Awards as actors — Davis won an Oscar trophy for best supporting actress — and the film earned a best picture nomination.
Rashad was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2016. She was nominated for a Tony for starring in the Wilson adaptation of Gem of the Ocean on Broadway. Her directing credits include a debut at the Seattle Repertory Theater also with Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean. In 2025 she directed Branden Jacobs Jenkins’ Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning Purpose on Broadway after a run at Steppenwolf. Rashad’s other directing credits include Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Our Lady of 121st Street, The Roommate, A Raisin in the Sun and Four Little Girls.
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