Jitney
by August Wilson
Directed by Renzo Carbonera
Telfair Peet Theatre
October 6th and 7th at 7:30 pm
The Telfair Peet Theatre will host two productions of the first Italian-language translation and adaptation of August Wilson’s Jitney, directed by Renzo Carbonera. This is a special presentation in partnership with the Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures.
Pittsburgh, 1977
In the midst of the steel industry crisis, for which the city is known worldwide, five drivers, Becker, Youngblood, Turnbo, Fielding, and Doub, struggle to get by, clinging nostalgically to the past, while seeing only the dark outlines of an uncertain future on the horizon.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, an alternative form of transport to buses and licensed taxis emerged in the predominantly African American neighborhoods of U.S. cities: the “jitney”. In those neighborhoods, taxis did not circulate; they were too expensive and they refused to pick up Black passengers. The “jitneys” operated outside the boundaries of the law, but provided job opportunities for people like our five protagonists, while also offering an essential service to the community.
August Wilson, the most prolific and influential African American playwright of all time, is being translated for the very first time into another language (Italian) and staged with an entirely Afro-Italian cast.
(In Italian with English supertitles.)
Performances are free and open to the public.
On the Far End
Writte and performed by Mary Kathryn Nagle
Directed by Margot Bordelon
Telfair Peet Theatre
March 16th at 7:30 pm
In collaboration with the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities, AUTD will host a performance by Mary Kathryn Nagle entitled On the Far End on March 16th at 7:30 pm. This one-woman performance explores key moments in the life of Muscogee (Creek) Nation activist Jean Hill Chaudhuri.
Muscogee leader Jean Hill Chaudhuri traces her family’s history from the Trail of Tears to her grandfather’s allotment in central Oklahoma. In an astonishing one-woman play, she shares her story—the Native boarding school she fled on foot, her marriage to a young Bengali scholar, and the advocacy that became her life’s work. With On the Far End, a reference to the landmark 2020 Supreme Court opinion in McGirt v. Oklahoma that rejected Oklahoma's attempt to extinguish the Muscogee Reservation, one of America’s leading playwrights (Sovereignty; Manahatta) weaves a deeply personal account of one family—her own mother-in-law’s—and a legacy of broken promises between nations.
Performance is free and open to the public.
