Phylicia Rashad Directs August Wilson's "Fences" T. Charles Erickson The cast, from left: Chris Myers, Esau Pritchett, Portia and G. Alverez Reid. If you ask most actors or directors why they love a particular writer's work, they will give you blandly polite answers, cryptic answers or, if you're really lucky, somewhat thoughtful answers. Ask Phylicia Rashad about August Wilson, whose Pulitzer Prize winner "Fences" she is directing at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven this month, and she pours forth like the daughter of a poet (Vivian Ayers) that she is. "He understands the power of language to invoke imagery and understanding, to transport us to wherever it is the language would have us go," Ms. Rashad, 65, said of Mr. Wilson in an interview from the theater, where "Fences" rehearsals were about to begin. He understands the power of words and rhythm and speech and the effect that it has on the listener's ears, the listener's senses. Ms. Rashad speaks of Mr. Wilson in the present tense, but he died in 2005, shortly after completing "Radio Golf," the last of his cycle of 10 plays, each examining the African-American experience in a particular decade of the 20th century. The plays include "The Piano Lesson," "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" and "Jitney." "He also has a great love for people, and I'm not talking syrupy love," Ms. Rashad continued. I'm talking earnest appreciation for humanity. She described Mr. Wilson's characters as "people that we would look at in everyday life and say, "Oh, yes" and keep going. Oh, yes, that's the garbage man. Oh, yes, that's the old lady who lives behind the red door. Because I think that we human beings spend a lot of time ignoring each other. And in doing so, we ignore ourselves. "Fences" is, in fact, about a sanitation worker, Troy Maxson (played on Broadway 23 years apart by James Earl Jones and Denzel Washington, both of whom won Tony Awards for their performances, and at Long Wharf by Esau Pritchett, in a coproduction with McCarter Theater Center in Princeton). Troy lives and works in Pittsburgh in 1957, has a wife and children, gets drunk on payday, struggles to make ends meet and ruminates on his past. What the "Oh, yes" people who see him on the streets do not know is that Troy was almost a baseball star. He was an outstanding player, but when he was young, black men did not play in the major leagues. Jackie Robinson, the first to do so, played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Troy simmers with repressed emotion. Ms. Rashad knows Mr. Wilson's work well. She played Aunt Ester - an almost mythical figure, a former slave said to be at least 280 years old - on Broadway in "Gem of the Ocean," the cycle's first play chronologically, set in 1904. And she has directed that play and "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" in regional theater. It was the work of another playwright, Lorraine Hansberry, for which Ms. Rashad won her Tony Award. She was Lena Younger, the matriarch of "A Raisin in the Sun," in the 2004 Broadway revival. Ms. Rashad has always found it odd, she said, that so many people see "Raisin" as a civil rights story. "That play is about the power of love to transcend everything," she said. That's why it lands. And that's why it touches people. Surprisingly, Ms. Rashad never won an Emmy Award for portraying Clair Huxtable - serene but firm, a mature and sexy lawyer, wife and mother - on "The Cosby Show" (1984-92). Even Mr. Wilson thought of her as Clair when they first met. "He said to me: "I didn't realize you had worked so much in theater. I just thought of you as a television actress," " she recalled. "I looked at him and I said, "You know, Mr. Wilson, I am of an age now when I am not trying to convince anybody of anything," " she said. Mr. Wilson told her that "sounded like something Aunt Ester would say." The role was hers. It is not difficult to see why an actress who has played such take-charge characters might want to move into directing, but Ms. Rashad insists that what she enjoys about the director's job is "the expansion of ideas" and the effort to "hold a vision and galvanize all of the creative energies involved." On the other hand, she admitted, with a laugh, "Some people just like to tell folks what to do." "Fences," by August Wilson, is at the Long Wharf Theater, 222 Sargent Drive, New Haven, through Dec. 22. Information: (203) 787-4282 or longwharf.org.