Photos: TWO TRAINS RUNNING at Rubicon Theatre

Rubicon Theatre will host WinterFest as part of the company’s 2024/2025 “Dare to Dream” season, including August Wilson’s TWO TRAINS RUNNING (Jan 15 – Feb. 2). Check out photos below!

The first two plays in the festival celebrate a new collaboration between RUBICON THEATRE COMPANY and THE ACTING COMPANY (TAC) of New York. 

Set in 1969, during a turbulent time in American history, August Wilson’s TWO TRAINS RUNNING offers a poignant, powerful, and surprisingly funny exploration of race, identity, and the pursuit of the American Dream in a rapidly changing world.

Directed by Lili-Anne Brown, this riveting production brings Wilson’s vibrant, multi-dimensional characters to life with authenticity and passion. The play unfolds in a small diner in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, where the owner Memphis Lee (played by Michael A. Shepperd) must decide if he should allow the government to take over his building or sell the property to a ruthless businessman. The restaurant’s waitress Risa (played by DeAnna Supplee), smart, angry and beautiful, struggles with men considering only her looks. Wolf, an enthusiastic racketeer (J'Laney Allen) and Holloway (Brian D. Coats), an older man with a spiritual perspective, are regulars at the restaurant. Sterling (James Milord) a brash young man just released from prison, is a newcomer to the restaurant. Hambone (Chuckie Benson) an indigent character who comes into the diner, is obsessed by a “ham” he is owed by a man for whom he painted a fence. (Other company members are Diane Coates, Robert Cornelius and Jeffrey Rashad.) 

Through the course of the play, the characters discuss the changes taking place in the community and the world outside, from gentrification, to the death of a local preacher the influence of Malcolm X, to the rise of the Black Power movement. However, the characters in Memphis’s diner are not on the front lines of the larger change that is happening. New York Times’ critic Frank Rich wrote of the original 1992 production, “The glorious storytelling serves not merely as picturesque, sometimes touching and often funny theater but as a penetrating revelation of a world hidden from view to those outside it…So determined is TWO TRAINS RUNNING to avoid red-letter events and larger-than-life heroes that it is easily Mr. Wilson's most adventurous and honest attempt to reveal the intimate heart of history.” 

Director Brown is a renowned director based in Chicago whose credits include the Huntington Theatre, Goodman Theatre, the McCarter, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Brown has received two Helen Hayes Awards, five Jeff Awards, two BTA awards and an African American Arts Alliance Award for excellence in directing.

TWO TRAINS RUNNING is part of August Wilson’s renowned Pittsburgh Cycle, a series of ten plays that chronicle the African American experience through the 20th century. The play received widespread critical acclaim for its exploration of identity, dignity, and the relentless pursuit of hope despite systemic oppression. Wilson’s poetic dialogue and richly developed characters continue to make his work a cornerstone of American theatre. The TAC/Rubicon run in Ventura is the launch of the National Tour, and the production will subsequently tour to 22 venues throughout the U.S.

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