Early in August Wilson’s King Hedley II , the title character’s mother criticizes the dirt he’s using to plant a garden. It’s a recurring metaphor for the play’s financially and spiritually oppressed characters. Can they find a way to grow out of their difficult backgrounds with the odds stacked against them?

The gritty production by Soul Rep Theatre and Bishop Art Theatre Center of the ninth of Wilson’s 10-play Pittsburgh Cycle -- each representing a decade in 20th century African

American history as experienced in the city’s Hill District -- doesn’t provide easy answers.

Instead, it presents a landscape of tough yet vulnerable people mostly trying to do the right thing in President Ronald Reagan’s crack-torn America, circa 1985, never asking the audience to feel sorry for them or th

See Full Page