August Wilson's 'Jitney' And A Sense Of Home

January 28, 2020 at 6:34 AM PST

Speaker 1: 00:00 Speaker 2: 00:29 Speaker 3: 00:42 Speaker 4: 00:45 Speaker 3: 01:42 Speaker 2: 01:47 Speaker 3: 01:54 Speaker 2: 01:57 Speaker 3: 02:18 Speaker 2: 02:31 Speaker 3: 03:13 Speaker 2: 03:25 Speaker 5: 04:19 Speaker 3: 04:32 Speaker 4: 04:36 Speaker 5: 04:47 Speaker 4: 04:57 Speaker 3: 05:05 Speaker 4: 05:13 Speaker 3: 06:58 Speaker 4: 07:08 Speaker 3: 08:06 The old globe theater is currently staging August Wilson's Jitney a play set in 1977. Pittsburgh KPBS arts reporter Beth Huck Amando interviewed two of the actors, Keith Randolph Smith and Steven Anthony Jones. And quickly discovered that the sense of place and of telling stories extends beyond the play to the people involved when she asked each actor to state his name to check audio levels. These are the stories she got. My name is Keith Randolph Smith. I was born in Cleveland, Ohio. I live in New York city. Oh, I'll actually now in New Jersey. I went to the American Academy of dramatic arts in New York. Been in army for a couple of three years. All right. And just to start, just state your name. I'm Steven Anthony Jones and I was born in Cleveland, Ohio. We didn't cross paths, but um, we, we come from the same place. Please call caramel house in Cleveland. Yes. Yup. Everett. It's the oldest community theater in America in 1911, uh, by Russell and Rob Wiener GLF and this was a white couple and they always insisted that it be integrated. It was, uh, in 1959, I saw a production of guys and dolls and that was it. That was it. I was gone. I was gone. I was a boy. And I asked my parents if you could make money doing that. And I said, well, that's what I'll do from the age of 12. I have been in love with the theater. So Keith, to start off with, tell us about the character you play in Jitney. Okay. The character playing Jitney, his name is dub. He's a Korean war vet. He's a Jitney driver. And remind people what Jitney means. Jitney is, um, another term for an unlicensed cab. Uh, in some someplace they call them gypsy cabs. Nowadays we call them lifts and Uber's, but they provided a service to the community, whereas at the time, yellow cabs would, uh, be hesitant to go into the Hill district in Pittsburgh. And what do you think August Wilson brought to theater? What do you think was unique about him that he kind of brought to the stage that no one else was doing at the time and make some kind of an original? Well, August wrote, uh, he wrote a play for each decade of the 20th century, uh, trying to share what, um, African Americans were going through and dealing with in their existence in the United States of America. Display Jitney is the 77, 1977. But what he did was he showed working class people. He did not show them as saints. He showed them all their complexity and all of their dimensions and just a fool full human being. And that's, I think one of his specialties. What he does, he's shows rich characters and all of their depth and especially working class folks and talk a little bit about August Wilson as a playwright. His plays are very specific in terms of kind of the time and place, yet they, you know, speak to everyone. August Wilson as a playwright has a musicality and a rhythm to his language and I'm sure that has to do with him. Writing poetry when he started out were words are important. Word order, we're choice, a sentence, construction images, uh, metaphors, all of that alliteration. Uh, it's all in his plays is they really beautifully written. When people come see the play, they always remark that, Oh, that character reminds me of my uncle. That character reminds me of that cousin. And I've heard this from people of many different nationalities, many different ages, many different genders. And so I know there's something universal in the specificity of his writing and it's, it's beautiful to witness him go home. The man was by here and you ain't told nobody what he say. They go bought the place up, come the first, the next month. Why in the hell didn't you tell somebody? I'm telling you now, Steven, first of all, describe your character in Jitney. My character is Jim Becker. I am the boss of the Jitney station. The play occurs against a backdrop of urban renewal. It ain't like that's a small piece of news. I got rent to pay doctor bills. Every man in here is dependent on the state or for the livelihood. So of course this is a us creates a great deal of, of, uh, an angst and, and, and a little turmoil. What do you think defines an August Wilson play in terms of kind of the, the style and the tone of it? He is a great storyteller, but he is not plot driven. I think he is more character and language driven. They are ordinary people who speak really poetically. And it is, I don't think a fabrication. Um, I, I think that in black culture in America, um, the, the way that we deal with language is different. Um, every ethnic group in the country deals with the English language differently. And I think very often, um, we have a rhythm and a style that lends itself to, uh, that is poetic. But that lends itself to a, a kind of a poetic expression, uh, within the structure of the drama. Uh, very often I find myself afterwards feeling as though I had been riding, floating along and in this sea of language, uh, that, that carries me up and down. And, uh, sometimes it's stormy and turbulent and other times it's just, it's smooth and the sun is shining and it's, it's filled with such, such beauty. Uh, but the other thing about his writing is that he achieves, uh, an emotional honesty that is stunning. The cycle of 10 plays was written with very specific times and places in mind. So how does that play to a contemporary audience? Do you feel? Well, each player's a period piece and like any period piece, uh, the audience, uh, sits in their seats, the lights go down, and then we take a journey together. Whether it is a journey and the time that we live in, or it is a journey that is in the seventies or the sixties. Um, that is part of just part of the magic of the theater. I think what August Wilson captured in Jitney was the life of working class black people, the everyday life, uh, in, in a sense, um, by examining the, the, the most mundane things he found things that were profound. That was Beth Armando speaking with actors. Keith Randolph Smith and Steven Anthony Jones. Jitney runs through February 23rd at the old globe theater.

By KPBS Public Media

The Old Globe Theatre is currently staging August Wilson’s "Jitney," a play set in 1977 Pittsburgh. KPBS arts reporter Beth Accomando interviewed two of the actors, Keith Randolph Smith and Steven Anthony Jones, and quickly discovered that the sense of place and of telling stories extends beyond the play to the people involved. When she asked each actor to state his name to check audio levels, these are the stories she got.