AUGUST WILSON FESTIVAL List of plays

The 10 plays that will be performed March 4-April 6 in Washington at the Kennedy Center’s celebration of “August Wilson’s 20th Century” and the decade in which each is set.

1900s: “Gem of the Ocean”: A haunting, ghostlike play, conjuring tales of slave ships and Africans arriving in chains in the New World.

1910s: “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone”: Set in a Pittsburgh boarding house, the children and grandchildren of slavery grapple with a world that won’t let them forget the past.

1920s: “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”: A volatile trumpet player rebels against racism in a Chicago recording studio.

1930s: “The Piano Lesson”: A brother and sister battle over a family heirloom, a link to the slavery in their past.

1940s: “Seven Guitars”: The final days of a Pittsburgh blues guitarist, telling the story of how and why he died.

1950s: “Fences”: A father-son drama of dreams denied and how that denial affects the relationship between the two men.

1960s: “Two Trains Running”: The displaced and the dreamers congregate in a dilapidated Pittsburgh restaurant scheduled for demolition.

1970s: “Jitney”: Another father-son tale, set in a gypsy cab station, as the owner of the cab company squares off against his offspring, newly released from prison.

1980s: “King Hedley II”: An ex-con attempts to get his life back on track despite the desperation, despair and violence that surrounds him.

1990s: “Radio Golf”: A successful middle-class entrepreneur tries to reconcile the present with the past.