Jitney: A Play - Broadway Tie-In Edition

August Wilson

Apr 2017 · Abrams

About this ebook

Only one of the plays in two-time Pulitzer Prize winner August Wilson’s masterful The American Century Cycle has never been seen on Broadway—until now. In his preface to this Broadway edition of Jitney, director Ruben Santiago-Hudson writes: “There had been nine jewels placed in August Wilson’s formidable crown, each had changed the landscape of Broadway in their respective seasons. Until now, only one gem was missing. With this production of Jitney at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre the final gem is in place.†?Set in the 1970s, this richly textured piece follows a group of men trying to eke out a living by driving unlicensed cabs, or jitneys. When the city threatens to board up the business and the boss’s son returns from prison, tempers flare, potent secrets are revealed and the fragile threads binding these people together may come undone at last.In addition to the essential and insightful preface by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, this edition boasts production stills from the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Broadway production, directed by Santiago-Hudson and featuring Harvy Blanks, Anthony Chisholm, Brandon J. Dirden, André Holland, Carra Patterson, Michael Potts, Keith Randolph Smith, Ray Anthony Thomas, and John Douglas Thompson.

About the author

Playwright August Wilson was born on April 27, 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His experiences of living in a primarily black community and then being the only black student in his class at a Roman Catholic high school would inform his dramatic writings. He dropped out of school at the age of 15 and continued his education on his own. Wilson wrote a ten play cycle that chronicles each decade of the black experience in the 20th century. Each of his plays focuses on what he perceived as the largest issue to confront African-Americans in that decade. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Fences and Piano Lesson, the best play Tony Award for Fences, and seven New York Drama Critics' Circle awards. He also received the Whiting Foundation Award, the American Theatre Critics Award, the 1999 National Humanities Medal awarded by the President, and numerous honorary degrees. He died of liver cancer on October 2, 2005 at the age of 60.