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August Wilson's play Fences contains a number of elaborate stage direction. The last one, in which Gabriel tries to blow his trumpet and then begins to dance and sing, ends as follows:

[Gabriel] finishes his dance and the gates of heaven stand open as wide as God's closet.

Unlike August Wilson, I have difficulty imagining God's closet and its dimensions. How can "the gates of heaven stand open as wide as God's closet" be represented on the stage? I am particularly interested in the earliest productions about which such information is available. My edition (Plume Books, 1986) mentions the following productions:

  • A staged reading at the Eugene O'Neill Center's 1983 National Playwrights Conference. This production may not be relevant at all, one reason being that a stage reading has no set, and another that it was not based on the final text.
  • 30 April 1985 at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, directed by Lloyd Richards.
  • 26 March 1987 at the 46th Street Theatre, directed by Lloyd Richards.

If no information about the end of the play in these productions is available, I would settle for information about other early productions.

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    This is indeed very flowery language, but I think any set designer worth his salt would interpret this stage direction as telling him to use his judgment on how wide the gates of heaven should be. (Which may be what Wilson intended, and is probably what a set designer should do anyway.)
    – Peter Shor
    Commented Sep 28 at 21:31
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    Here is a recent staging of the play by Trinity Theater in Rhode Island. See it here: providencejournal.com/story/entertainment/arts/2024/03/29/… The bareness of the stage/staging can be seen in the article's two pictures. It is not a literal stage direction. This war-injured brother blows a trumpet at the end but there is no closet on stage per se. At least in this production which I saw.
    – Lambie
    Commented Sep 29 at 15:20
  • I have read the play, so I know there isn't all that much on stage. But Fences is a play, not a novel, so what Wilson writes in that stage direction is meaningless if the director doesn't do anything to convey what is in that stage direction.
    – Tsundoku
    Commented Sep 29 at 20:23
  • I think it is about Gabriel's mental state in a kind of ectasy as he looks up, and speaks the last line. God's closet is big enough for everyone, especially the downtrodden, is my reading.
    – Lambie
    Commented Sep 29 at 21:21

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