Director Ruben Santiago-Hudson & The Cast Of August Wilson’s ‘Jitney’ Talk Its Long Awaited Broadway Debut

Set in the late 1970’s in the robust and colorfully textured world that is August Wilson’s Pittsburg, “Jitney” is a profound and compelling story about a group of Black men trying to scratch out a living as unlicensed jitney drivers. Threatened by impending gentrification, personal hardships and fractured relationships, Wilson’s first play is a stunning drama about the depths and complexities of Black masculinity.

Though it was the first play he ever wrote, “Jitney” is the last of Wilson’s plays to make it to Broadway. Ahead of its debut, I got the opportunity to chat with one of Wilson’s finest interpreters, Tony Award winner and director Ruben Santiago-Hudson as well as the majority of the cast. Anthony Chisholm (Fielding), Brandon Dirden (Booster), André Holland (Youngblood), Carra Patterson (Rena), Michael Potts (Turnbo), Ray Anthony Thomas (Philmore) and John Douglas Thompson (Becker) were all in attendance.

The cast and I spoke about August Wilson’s astounding legacy, the myths of Black masculinity, the late ‘70s as a particular time and space for Black people and Black women’s roles in Wilson’s plays.

Aramide Tinubu: Ruben, you’ve done so much with August Wilson’s cannon of work. How does “Jitney” fit in with your personal story?

Ruben Santiago-Hudson: That’s my life, that’s my history, that’s my culture, that’s who I am. We came from the same place. We’re from steel towns with Northern colored people talking about what they were running from and what they were running to. So we found the celebration in who we are as Black people. As Ossie Davis would call it, “The secret gladness of being Black.” This is who I am. I don’t have to do anything but just do my work and be honest, enjoy it and just say [August’s] words, but it’s my life, we had the same life.

AT: So what has this journey been like for you to finally get “Jitney” to Broadway?

RSH: It’s the reason I worked so hard; I promised him that if I had any strength in my body, I would do everything that I could. I never promised him that I could personally do it, but in my hubris, I did say, “I’ll get it done.” Ten years into the battle I thought it would never happen because all I got was rejected. I tried everything I could. I wrote letters; I directed every play. He wrote three roles for me. I did everything in my power to get to the place as a director that was worthy of this opportunity and as a producer and as a stalwart of his work, and all I did was get rejected. Then, Manhattan Theatre Club said, “Come on, let’s dance.” So, I’m humbled proud and appreciative.

AT: What do you think it was about “Jitney” that got August to the place where he found his voice?

RSH: This play was written like in ’79, and it didn’t really get completed until after “Seven Guitars” for a big reason. He cut an hour plus out of “Seven Guitars,” and ninety percent of that is in “Jitney.”

AT: Why do you think this is the only August Wilson play that has never made it to the Broadway stage until now despite the fact that it was his first play?

Ray Anthony Thomas: You know what, I think it’s just fate more than anything. I think it just happened. I don’t think there was any conspiracy or ill will against it.

André Holland: I think it’s about damn time. I first saw the play fifteen years ago in London, and after I saw it I said, “Why has this not been seen?!” Every six months or so I write my agent and say, “Hey, what about “Jitney?” I’d write letters to the National Theatre and say, “Hey! Why don’t ya’ll bring it over here?” So, I’m just grateful especially when I see people like Anthony Chisholm and Ruben. These are legends, so I’m grateful to be a part of it.

Michael Potts: I will say I don’t know why it has taken so long. I think people might have gotten caught up in the characters or the themes in some of the other plays. Like “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” for example, lots of people have heard of her; she’s a historical figure. The character in the “The Piano Lesson” is a huge thing in ”Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.” Those are bigger much larger ideas, and this is basically a story about the fraternity of Black men together and this particular jitney station.

Brandon Dirden: It’s kind of biblical isn’t it? The first shall be last. I happened to believe that there are no accidents. I’m not smart enough to understand all of the intricacies of why it took this long to get here, but I’m just grateful to be in the room. I’m grateful to be charged with the responsibility to help tell this story. We’re not the first company to tell this story, and we won’t be the last. We’re just the first on Broadway. Maybe 2016-2017 is the optimum time for the world to receive this play and this message about reconciliation, about love, about hope and about being concerned about what is happening in our communities. I can’t think of a more right time to do this play.

AT: I concur.

BD: I don’t know why it’s taken this long, but I’m glad that we’re here.

Anthony Chisholm: You can’t write stuff better than that. “Jitney” was submitted to Lloyd Richards who was the longest running dean at Yale University. Lloyd kind of discovered August, not to say that he wasn’t going to get discovered anyway. Lloyd rejected “Jitney, ” and it was only ninety minutes long, it was only a skeleton of what was to come. But August vowed when he got the rejection that he was going to write the greatest play that was ever written and that was “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”

John Douglas Thompson: He wrote [“Jitney”] in the late ’70s, so the time frame of the play is when he was writing it. And, somehow the other plays took root if you will as far as being produced and worked on and being brought to Broadway. They were in that kind of a pipeline where somehow “Jitney” got forgotten. But, I think if you look at what the play has done in the regions, why people have such high expectations and why it has such high anticipation, it’s that they have been rooting for it all this time. It’s this play’s time and this play’s chance to complete the cycle, but also to start the cycle all over again.

Continue reading at Shadow and Act.

Image: Manhattan Theatre Club

Director Barry Jenkins, Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney & The Men Of ‘Moonlight’ Talk Redefining Black Male Identity In Film Narratives

Coming of age stories are plentiful, with the inner city genre of the ‘90s, films like “Menace II Society” and “Boyz N the Hood” thrust the urban Black male narrative onto the big screen. This era of filmmaking also ushered in some Black female narratives, stories like “Just Another Girl On The I.R.T” and “Eve’s Bayou” and more recently, Dee Rees’ “Pariah” also made waves in the cinema landscape. However, Barry Jenkins' “Moonlight” is once in a lifetime. Based on Tarell Alvin McCraney’s stunning play, “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue,” the film is a riveting masterpiece on Black queer identity, hyper-masculinity, and compassion. It’s a film that speaks more loudly in its silences than the most overpacked and overblown action films.

Recently, I sat down with Barry Jenkins, Tarell Alvin McCraney and the film’s stars Trevante Rhodes and André Holland. We spoke about the filmmaking process, Black male intimacy and what they want the film to say.

You can read Shadow and Act’s review on “Moonlight” here.

Why was it so important to get this narrative out?

Barry Jenkins: When I read “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue,” I just fell in love with the characters and the story. What Tarell did, which was shocking to me at first, was he took this world, this neighborhood where we grew up, and he just put it up there. I had never experienced anyone who had done that for this specific place. I was just struck at how brave it was to do some of those things; especially with some of the specific characters.

Tarell, why did you write this piece in the first place?

Tarell Alvin McCraney: It’s difficult to narrow down why I wrote it in a way that feels generous to the process of it. It was really self-serving. There was no real representation of myself to see, and to purge ideas on and to look at for models of. I was trying to figure out my manhood, my childhood, and my personhood. I was the son of a crack-addict who had just died from AIDS-related complications, but at the same time, I was on the precipice of a life-changing moment. I wasn’t very intimate. I had never had an intimate relationship by then, and I couldn’t quite figure out what was happening, why these cycles were happening in my life; why I was still kind of reticent even though I was in performing arts. I was very shy. I didn’t go out to clubs, I was twenty-two years old, and I still wasn’t going to keggers. But, I really wanted to look at the circumstances that made my life and then try to figure out what I would have been like if I’d turned left instead of right. What would have happened if I decided to take that next move in that other direction, what would life look like? Again, that was the impotence for it, but I didn’t know even what I was chasing, I just wanted to put those thoughts down. So, I took the stories and actual happenings of me; being taught to ride a bike by a drug dealer, being taught to swim, being nourished and talked to and treating like a human being by this person. And then, the aspects of growing up with an increasingly addicted mother and being in a neighborhood surrounded by people who felt the need to ostracize and bully; but bully is not even a word; it should really be called terrorizing. There was sometimes imminent danger for people that were different, and I wanted to understand what it was about my interactions that made me the recalcitrant person that I could be. I never expected it to be a play. I never expected it to be anything except for memories put down in a very visual way. I didn’t know that it had a visual life and that the stage would support it, but then I actually wrote plays and I thought, “This is for the stage. “

How much is the script is autobiographical, Tarell?

TAM: I would say about two-thirds.

BJ: There are moments in this film that are autobiographical for Tarrell, and there are less, but there are also moments that are autobiographical for me. What I love is that when you watch the film, you can’t even tell. André and Trevante, the film is so intersectional in terms of race, sexuality, and socio-economics. How do you prepare for your roles?

André Holland: For me, it was making sure that I understood what the place was. So I went down to Miami a couple of weeks early and spent some time in the housing projects that the story largely takes place in. I just tried to figure out the accent, tried to figure out how these people dress. I listened to a lot of music. Also, Tarell’s plays which I’ve read and worked on, a lot of them deal with the same sort of issues of identity, community, sexuality, and masculinity. So, being really familiar with his plays helped me to prepare a lot. I also have my “actor process.” I ask myself a lot of questions, and then I try to find answers to those questions. Going into this film the big thing for me was shame and guilt. I felt like those things were really driving Kevin. That moment in the middle chapter when he hurts Chiron, I think he’s been living with the guilt of that for a long, long time. I think when he shows up again, he’s trying to get to the bottom of that. It’s “Is there a way for us to fix that? It’s “Are you OK?” It’s “Can you come out and join me in a more peaceful authentic place?”

Regarding the space that is Liberty City, Miami in the 1980s, what work did you have to do to recreate that space and feeling?

BJ: No work. I don’t like to talk about time stamps; 1987 or 1989 or things like that. But that place feels to me, largely the same as it did when I grew up. It’s part of the permanence of whatever is the spiritual and cultural gumbo that’s in the air. To be honest, when I read the script that’s what it was. I thought, “This feels like my childhood, but it also feels like now.” It felt like a very contemporary story or how stories are rooted in our past. So we didn’t have to do a lot to augment Liberty City to make it feel like the place where we grew up. It literally is the place where we grew up, and it hasn’t changed a ton. People who have watched the film talk about the imagery, but I didn’t do much. The walls are painted that color, and they have been since I was a kid. One of the things that I’m really proud of in response to the film is the idea of it being timeless despite the fact that the character is aging, so obviously time is passing. I think that what he’s going through because it represents so much of what we all go through creates a sense of timelessness.

Continue reading at Shadow and Act.

I met and chatted with Andre Holland, Trevante Rhodes, Director Barry Jenkins and Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney today. Go see their film @moonlightmov tomorrow, it's breathtaking. Interview will be up on Shadow and Act tomorrow. 🎞🌑 #chocolategirlinterviews

A photo posted by Chocolate Girl In The City (@midnightrami) on Oct 20, 2016 at 2:35pm PDT