Jitney

In tribute to the late Pulitzer Prize winning playwright August Wilson and in association with the African Continuum Theatre Company, Ford’s Theatre presents Jitney, the eighth in Wilson’s ten-play cycle on the African American experience. One of America’s most celebrated playwrights, Wilson is quoted as stating that he found his writer’s voice while working on this play.

The story is set in the 1970s in Pittsburgh’s Hill District where urban renewal threatens the future of a black-owned gypsy cab company that covers neighborhoods avoided by other cab services. Jitney deals with survival – economic, romantic and otherwise – in a hostile environment and the manner in which the primarily male characters wrestle with family, generational clashes, romance, responsibility, and justice, among other issues. Jennifer Nelson, the producing artistic director of African Continuum Theatre Company, who recently directed Kingdom, leads a cast of Washington area actors, including Doug Brown, Frederick Strother, David Emerson Toney, Kenyatta Rogers, and Craig Wallace.