Tony Award-Winner Lillias White to Lead Rubicon's GEM OF THE OCEAN, Opening 5/24

Rubicon's first play by August Wilson is also the first chronologically in the author's 10-play series dramatizing the African-American experience in the Twentieth Century. 

 

GEM OF THE OCEAN is described as "a mystical play set in 1904 in Pittsburgh's Hill District. At a local mill, a man is accused of stealing a bucket of nails. But rather than confess to a crime he didn't commit, he jumps in the river and becomes a martyr to his co-workers. Riots break out and the workers begin to strike. Against this turbulent backdrop, another young man named Citizen Barlow arrives at the home of Aunt Ester, a 285-year-old healer who is the keeper of tradition and history for her people. She sends Citizen on a spiritual journey aboard the slave ship Gem of the Ocean-where he must confront his ancestors and then face the truth about himself."

 

Lillias White returns to Rubicon as the 285-year-old spiritual guide Aunt Ester. White starred in the World Premiere of The Best Is Yet To Come: The Music of Cy Coleman, which enjoyed a successful off-Broadway run following its initial engagement at Rubicon and was just nominated for a Drama Desk Award. She was most recently seen last February in her solo cabaret My Guy Cy for Rubicon's Broadway Cabaret Series. White's Broadway performances include Barnum,