Theater: Gem of the Ocean

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Gem of the Ocean

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Get your tickets booked for a beautifully expressed play "Gem Of The Ocean" which will ignite your thoughts. Chicago Gigs provides you a range of tickets for the show at very cheap and attractive prices. Don't miss this opportunity to enjoy this masterpiece of August Wilson.

Starting from its impulsive opening scene to its rising conclusion three hours later, Gem of the Ocean fascinates its audience and never lets go. Its been a long time the play is being presented, August Wilson's elegantly written and articulately performed play tells and reveals the unbreakable bond between human freedom and spiritual truth. The play still haunts and taunts the society. The playwright August Wilson was a Pulitzer Prize winner and renowned American playwright. This play is set in 1904 at 1839 Wylie Avenue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's Hill District. Gem of the Ocean is the first episode of his decade-by-decade, ten-play chronicle, often called "The Pittsburgh Cycle", picturing the African-American experience and prejudice in the twentieth century.

The play is set at the start of a new time of century where memories of slavery is still having its impression on people's mind. The scene is started by Aunt Esther, a 287-year-old fiery woman. Aunt Ester shares the house with Black Mary and Eli, both of whom look after her and the house. Aunt Esther welcomes into her Hill District home two persons. One is Solly Two Kings who was born into slavery and live through the harsh realities of slavery in the Union Army. Another person is Citizen Barlow who is a young man from Alabama searching for a new life. He is the next generation of African American floating in a sea of frustration and disappointment with no spiritual center or community to anchor him. He is looking for salvation. She sets him off on a spiritual journey to find a city, the city of bones, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The title of the play"Gem Of The Ocean" suggests a patriotic hymn which was popular in America, Columbia.

In the play, each character has revealed its emotions and feelings so well perfectly. Every character is drawn in a superb way and wonderfully expressed. Though the play seems to be unreal sometimes i their thought process and mentality as they represent something bigger than themselves on the universal plane. At the same time, they are also very real people making themselves familiar to us with respect to their strengths and imperfections.
The play ran at the Walter Kerr Theater in 2004 and 2005 on Broadway for which it received five Tony Award nominations. Ben Brantley of The New York Times said few words about the play "A swelling battle hymn of transporting beauty. Theatergoers who have followed August Wilson's career will find in Gem a touchstone for everything else he has written".

In the form of "Gem of the Ocean" August has gifted us a highly crafted complexity woven from centuries-old threads that nurtures us in the wisdom, warmth and humor of thousands of people whose lives are interconnected to each other. Overall Gem of the Ocean is a Masterpiece without any doubt. August Wilson continues to prove that he is the consummate playwright of his time.Though August Wilson has written many plays but "Gem of the Ocean " ignites the thoughts and emotions of the audience. It is one of the glittering jewel in Wilson's already impressive crown. With its soaring poetry and lyrical dialog, Gem brings the tale of a old lady's mesmerizing wisdom, young black man's personal liberation and spiritual salvation to vivid life.