As Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe brings Fences to the stage, founder Nate Jacobs looks back on 25 years in Sarasota and the fateful meeting that stayed the course.  “Don’t you strike out!”  It’s a warning. It’s a threat. It’s perhaps the closest Troy Maxson can get to fatherly wisdom when the audience meets him in August Wilson’s Fences. Once a promising baseball player, at 53, Troy’s glory days are long gone and he spends his Monday to Friday riding a garbage truck, piling trash in the back and with bitterness on his soul. He laughs too loud. He drinks from the bottle. He harbors resentment like it could pay the bills. And when Troy tells his son that he better not strike out, it’s not just a father telling a child to shape up and hit curfew; it’s a man warning his son that there are only so many chances in life—even fewer for a black man in 1957—and the choices he makes will define the shape of his life in ways he may not yet understand.

This is all true, though perhaps not in exactly the way Troy intends. Written in 1985 and the sixth in Wilson’s celebrated “Pittsburgh Cycle,” Fences won the Pulitzer, four Tonys, and more when it hit Broadway two years later, introducing the wide world to the complex inner life of the Maxson family, gradually laid bare in a complicated criss-crossing of responsibilities and obligations, promises made and broken, dreams deferred and dreams denied. See the rebellious son, torn between obedience to his father and walking his own path. See the dutiful wife, putting on a brave smile to hold the house together. See the great patriarch himself, the provider put-upon, casting a shadow over it all.

“August Wilson was giving America a fly-on-the-wall look into the black community, the black family, and the black man,” says WBTT Founder and Artistic Director Nate Jacobs. “It’s a beautiful brown and black story that opens our eyes to the black man’s plight in America at that time.” It’s a plight all-consuming for Troy, looking back on a life misshapen by hostile forces outside his control. The damage becomes generational, and even a world that offers opportunity to his son only widens the gulf between them. And it’s a cruel paradox when progress creates such separation.

But shadows are like ghosts—everyone makes their own. And as the play unfolds, Troy’s inner narrative will be tested. The world is the world but everyone ultimately decides for themselves how to live in it. That is their choice alone. That doesn’t mean it isn’t easier for some than others. But it also doesn’t mean Troy was wrong. He just didn’t always know when he was at bat. It was 2005 when Jacobs met August Wilson. It was at the National Black Theatre Festival (now the International Black Theatre Festival) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. More accurately, it was in the hallway of a hotel nearby, and, inside his head, Jacobs is screaming, “OH MY GOD! AUGUST WILSON!” To the rest of the world, he calmly walks over and introduces himself as “Nathaniel Jacobs, from Sarasota, Florida.” He tells Wilson about WBTT. He tells him that they’re really struggling. He admits what his heart is afraid might be true. “I don’t know if Sarasota is the place for me,” he says. “The community is not supporting me, and I really don’t know if Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe is going to last.” Maybe he should move to New York City. Try again there.

Wilson studies Jacobs for a moment. Jacobs dares to hope he may receive permission to quit. Instead, Wilson asks a question.

“Why are we in Winston-Salem, North Carolina?”

“For the festival.”

And if Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is good enough for a national theater festival that brings in the best from Hollywood and Broadway, Wilson says, why can’t Jacobs build his theater in Sarasota? “Don’t go to New York,” Wilson says. “You stay in Sarasota because Sarasota is where you’re supposed to be.” Don’t you strike out.

Wilson would pass two months later. “He was right,” Jacobs says today, with WBTT well into its 25th anniversary season. A lot has changed since he met August Wilson. A lot accomplished. He still refers to that chance meeting as one of the defining moments of his life. “That was integral to who I am today and that my 25-year-journey is what it is,” he says. “It sunk deep in my soul and my spirit. I was able to set my feet solidly on my path and remain steadfast in the direction I was supposed to go.” And no matter what life throws, he’ll swing for the fences. 

Photography by Wes Roberts.