Photos: First Look At August Wilson's JITNEY At The Middletown Arts Center

The Middletown Arts Center presents the final weekend of August Wilson’s Jitney, produced by the Dunbar Repertory Company and directed by Darrell Lawrence Willis, Sr., June 9-11, 2023. See photos from the production.

Director Darrell Lawrence Willis, Sr. of Dunbar Repertory Company embarks on the company’s goal to present all ten plays in August Wilson’s celebrated “The American Century Cycle” over the next five years. Jitney, the seventh play in the Pulitzer-prize-winning playwright’s cycle on the black experience in 20th-century America, is set in the early 1970s and follows a group of men trying to eke out a living by driving unlicensed cabs, or jitneys, in the black neighborhood of Pittsburgh’s Hill District. 

Ticket prices are $20 and are general admission. Purchase tickets online at middletownarts.org or call the MAC Box Office at 732.706.4100. The Middletown Arts Center is located at 36 Church Street in Middletown, NJ (next to the Middletown train station). Free parking is available onsite with additional free parking available in station metered lot on weekday evenings after 6 p.m. and on weekends.

Set in an unofficial taxi station threatened with demolition in 1977, Jitney explores the lives and relationships of drivers, highlighting conflicts between generations and different concepts of legacy and identity. When the city of Pittsburgh threatens to board up the gypsy cab business and the boss’ son returns from prison, tempers flare, potent secrets are revealed and the fragile threads binding these people together may come undone at last. A thoroughly revised version of a play Wilson first wrote in 1979, Jitney was produced in New York for the first time in spring 2000, winning rave reviews and the accolade of the New York Drama Critics Circle as the best play of the year.

Jitney’s cast includes Collin Roach (Youngblood), Jo Leo Carney Waterton (Turnbo), Larry Calhoun (Fielding), Bellamy Shivers (Doub), Joseph Taylor (Shealy), Kirk Lambert (Philmore), Arthur Gregory Pugh (Becker), Damien S. Berger (Booster) and Dani Richards (Rena). The crew includes Stephanie Schoppe (Production Stage Manager) and Mark Antonio Henderson (Associate Artistic Director).