August Wilson S Jitney

"Regular cabs will not travel to the Pittsburgh Hill District of the 1970s, and so the residents turn to each other. Jitney dramatizes the lives of men hustling to make a living as jitneys--unofficial, unlicensed taxi cab drivers. When the boss Becker's son returns from prison, violence threatens to erupt. What makes this play remarkable is not the plot; Jitney is Wilson at his most real--the words these men use and the stories they tell form a true slice of life."--The Wikipedia entry, accessed 5/22/2014.

Jitney is the seventh in Wilson's American Century cycle of plays on the black experience in twentieth-century America. He writes not about historical events or the pathologies of the black community, but the unique particulars of black culture. Currently on Broadway; it was first produced in New York in the spring of 2000, with a London run following in 2001, winning rave reviews and the accolade of the as the best play of the year. Set in the 1970s, this richly textured piece follows a group of men trying to eke out a living by driving unlicensed cabs ('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. In addition to the essential and insightful preface by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, this edition includes production stills from the Manhattan Theatre Club's Broadway production, directed by Santiago-Hudson and featuring Harvy Blanks, Anthony Chisholm, Brandon J. Dirden, Andr� Holland (Moonlight), Carra Patterson (Straight Outta Compton), Michael Potts (The Book of Mormon), Keith Randolph Smith, Ray Anthony Thomas and John Douglas Thompson.

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.

Contributors to this collection of 15 essays are academics in English, theater, and African American studies. They focus on the second half of Wilson's century cycle of plays, examining each play within the larger context of the cycle and highlighting themes within and across particular plays. Some topics discussed include business in the street in Jitney and Gem of the Ocean, contesting black male responsibilities in Jitney, the holyistic blues of Seven Guitars, violence as history lesson in Seven Guitars and King Hedley II, and ritual death and Wilson's female Christ. The book offers an index of plays, critics, and theorists, but not a subject index. Nadel is chair of American literature and culture at the University of Kentucky.

The first comprehensive study of August Wilson's drama introduces the major themes and motifs that unite Wilson's ten-play cycle about African American life in each decade of the twentieth century. Framed by Wilson's life experiences and informed by his extensive interviews, this book provides fresh, coherent, detailed readings of each play, well-situated in the extant scholarship. It also provides an overview of the cycle as a whole, demonstrating how it comprises a compelling interrogation of American culture and historiography. Keenly aware of the musical paradigms informing Wilson's dramatic technique, Nadel shows how jazz and, particularly, the blues provide the structural mechanisms that allow Wilson to examine alternative notions of time, property, and law. Wilson's improvisational logics become crucial to expressing his notions of black identity and resituating the relationship of literal to figurative in the African American community. The final two chapters include contributions by scholars Harry J. Elam, Jr. and Donald E. Pease

Fences represents the decade of the 1950s, and, when it premiered in 1985, it won the Pulitzer Prize. Set during the beginnings of the civil rights movement, it also concerns generational change and renewal, ending with a celebration of the life of its protagonist, even though it takes place at his funeral. Critics and scholars have lauded August Wilson's work for its universality and its ability, especially in Fences, to transcend racial barriers and this play helped to earn him the titles of "America's greatest playwright" and "the African American Shakespeare."

Set in Pittsburgh in 1948, Seven Guitars explores the black experience in America as friends of Floyd "Schoolboy Barton" gather together to mourn the sudden death of the talented blues guitarist who was on the brink of success. Flashing back to the week prior to his passing, the true reasons for his tragic demise are revealed.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences and The Piano Lesson comes a “vivid and uplifting” (Time) play about unsung men and women who are anything but ordinary. August Wilson established himself as one of our most distinguished playwrights with his insightful, probing, and evocative portraits of Black America and the African American experience in the twentieth century. With the mesmerizing Two Trains Running, he crafted what Time magazine called “his most mature work to date.” It is Pittsburgh, 1969, and the regulars of Memphis Lee’s restaurant are struggling to cope with the turbulence of a world that is changing rapidly around them and fighting back when they can. The diner is scheduled to be torn down, a casualty of the city’s renovation project that is sweeping away the buildings of a community, but not its spirit. For just as sure as an inexorable future looms right around the corner, these people of “loud voices and big hearts” continue to search, to father, to persevere, to hope. With compassion, humor, and a superb sense of place and time, Wilson paints a vivid portrait of everyday lives in the shadow of great events.