Two Trains Running

While the Century Cycle does not follow a continuous storyline, the plays exist in the same world, as evidenced by the occasional repeated characters, familial relationships, or references across plays. The most significant repeated reference is to Aunt Ester, an Black woman who lives in the neighborhood and claims to be 349 years old in 1969 during Two Trains Running. The characters take this information with varying degrees of skepticism, and audiences likely did as well, since this play contains the first mention of Aunt Ester in the plays that Wilson had written as of 1990. Her claim is later semi-substantiated in Gem of the Ocean (2003) (Wilson’s penultimate Century Cycle play in terms of writing order, but the first in the decade chronology), which takes audiences back to 1904 and the beginning of the 20th century. Gem of the Ocean centers on Aunt Ester and brings her onstage so audiences can witness her mysticism and soul-washing as a literality rather than a metaphor. In King Hedley II (1999), set in 1985, Aunt Ester—again an offstage character—dies, supposedly at the age of 366. And in Radio Golf (2005), set in 1997 (the final installment of the Cycle, both chronologically and in writing order), Aunt Ester’s house is set to be demolished for the sake of urban development.