In chronological order of the decade in which they are set, the plays in August Wilson’s American Century Cycle are: Gem of the Ocean (1904), Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1911), Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1927), The Piano Lesson (1936), Seven Guitars (1948), Fences(1957), Two Trains Running (1969), Jitney (1977), King Hedley II (1985) and Radio Golf (1997).
Interestingly, Wilson wrote the plays in a completely different order. The first was Ma Rainey, which is also the only play not set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District; instead, it is set in Chicago in 1927. Moreover, Wilson did not explicitly set out to write a 10-play cycle (as American playwright Eugene O’Neill had attempted to do during the years 1935-1939, although he completed only two). The final two plays that Wilson wrote were the “bookend plays”: Gem of the Ocean and Radio Golf. Wilson died of liver cancer in 2005, only a few months after completing Radio Golf.
