Deep Dish Theater Company's eighth season concludes with the Chapel Hill premiere of Jitney by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson. It will be directed by Kathryn Hunter-Williams and will run from April 30 to May 23 at the company's home in Chapel Hill's University Mall.
Set in 1977 in Pittsburgh's African American Hill District, Jitney is a gritty and compassionate comedy that explores the struggles of the drivers at a gypsy cab company. The varied cast of characters who move in and out of the station between calls - a young Vietnam veteran (Prince T. Bowie) and his frustrated wife (Connie McCoy), the station's owner (Lester Hill) whose son (Mike Wiley) is returning from 20 years in prison, the neighborhood busybody (Charles Delton Streeter), the local numbers runner (Thomasi McDonald), a philosopher (John Rogers Harris), a former tailor (Gil Faison) and a hotel doorman (Mike Goolsby) - are all trying to scrape out a living while their station is threatened with demolition to make way for urban development. "It's a forgotten time - after the civil rights movement, after Martin Luther King - there were all the promises of the Civil Rights Act but not many had come to fruition," said director Kathryn Hunter-Williams. "The old world was gone, but the new one really hadn't arrived yet."A special preview of Jitney will be held Friday, April 17 at 7 pm at the Sonia Haynes Stone Center on the UNC campus. The evening will feature scenes from the play and a discussion moderated by Dr. Renee Alexander Craft of the UNC Communications Department.
Deep Dish is located in Chapel Hill's University Mall, on Estes Drive and US 15-501. Ticket prices and showtimes are: Wednesday and Thursday (7:30 p.m. curtain) - $16 adults, $14 seniors, $12 students; and Friday-Sunday (8:00 p.m. curtain on Friday and Saturday, 2:00 p.m. Sunday matinee) - $18 adults, $16 seniors, $14 students. The Deep Dish box office in University Mall is open Wednesday-Saturday from 3 to 6 p.m. Tickets can also be ordered by visiting www.deepdishtheater.org or by calling 919/968-1515. For more information, call (919) 968-1515 or visit the Deep Dish website at www.deepdishtheater.org.
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