Jim Becker and his unlicensed drivers take the people of Pittsburgh Hill District where regular taxi cabs won't - healing old wounds and tearing new ones as they pass the time in a condemned taxi rank between pick-ups. August Wilson's groundbreaking modern classic explores the fragile bond between eight men as they live, love and work in a racially segregated, post-Vietnam America. Jitney received its British premiere at the National Theatre, London, in 2001, when it won the Olivier Award for Best New Play. This new edition was published alongside the 2021-22 revival by The Old Vic, Headlong and Leeds Playhouse, directed by Tinuke Craig.

"The Century Cycle" is August Wilson's epic dramatization of the African-American experience and heritage in the 20th century. Wilson's extraordinary lifework has been called one of the most ambitious dramatic projects ever undertaken. "(New York Times)" It is presented here for the first time in its entirety in a ten-volume, hardcover, slipcased edition.

From the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson"
"The glow accompanying August Wilson's place in contemporary American theater is fixed." - Toni Morrison
When Harold Loomis arrives at a black Pittsburgh boardinghouse after seven years' impressed labor on Joe Turner's chain gang, he is a free man--in body. But the scars of his enslavement and a sense of inescapable alienation oppress his spirit still, and the seemingly hospitable rooming house seethes with tension and distrust in the presence of this tormented stranger. Loomis is looking for the wife he left behind, believing that she can help him reclaim his old identity. But through his encounters with the other residents he begins to realize that what he really seeks is his rightful place in a new world--and it will take more than the skill of the local "People Finder" to discover it.
This jazz-influenced drama is a moving narrative of African-American experience in the 20th century.

The time is 1927. The place is a run-down recording studio in Chicago. Ma Rainey, the legendary blues singer, is due to arrive with her entourage to cut new sides of old favorites. Waiting for her are her black musician sidemen, the white owner of the record company, and her white manager. What goes down in the session to come is more than music. It is a riveting portrayal of black rage . . . of racism, of the self-hate that racism breeds, and of racial exploitation . . .

'King Hedley II' is the eight work in August Wilson's 10-play cycle chronicling, decade by decade, the history of the African American experience in the 20th century. This one is set in the 1980s and tells the story of an ex-con in post-Reagan Pittsburgh trying to rebuild his life.

It is the spring of 1948. In the still cool evenings of Pittsburgh's Hill district, familiar sounds fill the air. A rooster crows. Screen doors slam. The laughter of friends gathered for a backyard card game rises just above the wail of a mother who has lost her son. And there's the sound of the blues, played and sung by young men and women with little more than a guitar in their hands and a dream in their hearts.

August Wilson's Seven Guitars is the sixth chapter in his continuing theatrical saga that explores the hope, heartbreak, and heritage of the African-American experience in the twentieth century. The story follows a small group of friends who gather following the untimely death of Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton, a local blues guitarist on the edge of stardom. Together, they reminisce about his short life and discover the unspoken passions and undying spirit that live within each of them.

NOW A NETFLIX FILM STARRING VIOLA DAVIS AND CHADWICK BOSEMAN *Two stunning, intensely powerful modern classics about race in 20th century America from the legendary Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright August Wilson* In Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, the great blues diva Ma Rainey is due to arrive at a run-down Chicago recording studio with her entourage to cut new sides of old favourites. Waiting for her are the black musicians in her band - and the white owners of the record company. A tense, searing account of racism in jazz-era America that the New Yorker called 'a genuine work of art'. Fences centres on Troy Maxson, a garbage collector, an embittered former baseball player and a proud, dominating father, in 1950s Pittsburgh. When college athletic recruiters scout his teenage son, Troy struggles against his young son's ambition, his wife, who he understands less and less, and his own frustrated dreams. 'A prolific and successful playwright who confines his themes to African American culture... The level of his achievement is high. This comes powerfully into view when the play is read, an activity for me that is equal to, and in some ways more fruitful than, seeing its stage production.' Toni Morrison 'In his work, August Wilson depicted the struggles of Black Americans with uncommon lyrical richness, theatrical density and emotional heft, in plays that give vivid voices to people on the frayed margins of life' New York Times 'August Wilson has established himself as the richest theatrical voice to emerge in the U.S. since Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller' Time

The 1987 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama

From August Wilson, author of "The Piano Lesson" and the 1984-85 Broadway season's best play, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom"," " is another powerful, stunning dramatic work that has won him numerous critical acclaim including the 1987 Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize. The protagonist of "Fences "(part of Wilson's ten-part "Pittsburgh Cycle" plays), Troy Maxson, is a strong man, a hard man. He has had to be to survive. Troy Maxson has gone through life in an America where to be proud and black is to face pressures that could crush a man, body and soul. But the1950s are yielding to the new spirit of liberation in the 1960s... a spirit that is changing the world Troy Maxson has learned to deal with the only way he can...a spirit that is making him a stranger, angry and afraid, in a world he never knew and to a wife and son he understands less and less...

A Pulitzer Prize winner. Garbage collector Troy Maxson clashes with his son over an athletic scholarship.

"No one except perhaps Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams has aimed so high and achieved so much in the American theater."-John Lahr, "The New Yorker"

"A swelling battle hymn of transporting beauty. Theatergoers who have followed August Wilson's career will find in Gem a touchstone for everything else he has written."-Ben Brantley, "The New York Times"

"Wilson's juiciest material. The play holds the stage and its characters hammer home, strongly, the notion of newfound freedom."-Michael Phillips, "Chicago Tribune"

"Gem of the Ocean" is the play that begins it all. Set in 1904 Pittsburgh, it is chronologically the first work in August Wilson's decade-by-decade cycle dramatizing the African American experience during the 20th century-an unprecedented series that includes the Pulitzer Prizewinning plays "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson." Aunt Esther, the drama's 287-year-old fiery matriarch, welcomes into her Hill District home Solly Two Kings, who was born into slavery and scouted for the Union Army, and Citizen Barlow, a young man from Alabama searching for a new life. "Gem of the Ocean" recently played across the country and on Broadway, with Phylicia Rashad as Aunt Esther.

Earlier in 2005, on the completion of the final work of his ten play cycle-surely the most ambitious American dramatic project undertaken in our history-August Wilson disclosed his bout with cancer, an illness of unusual ferocity that would eventually claim his life on October 2. Fittingly the Broadway theatre where his last play will be produced in 2006 has been renamed the August Wilson Theater in his honor. His legacy will animate the theatre and stir the human heart for decades to come.

Drama

Characters: 8 male, 1 female

Interior Set

Set in 1970 in the Hill District of Pittsburgh that is served by a makeshift taxi company, Jitney is a beautiful addition to the author's decade by decade cycle of plays about the black American experience in the twentieth century.

"Explosive... Crackles with theatrical energy."-N.Y. Daily News

"Could be described as just a lot of men sitting around talking. But the talk has such varied range and musicality, and it is rendered with such stylish detail, that a complete urban symphony emerges.... Drivers return from jobs with stories that summon an entire ethos.... Throughly engrossing, Jitney holds us in charmed captivity."- New York Times

"Comic, soulful and immensely moving."-Time Out

"A transport of delight So vividly written ... it keeps you steadily amused, concerned and moved."-New York Magazine

Winner of the New York Drama Critics Award for Best New Play and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off Broadway Play.

Set in 1997 in a storefront redevelopment office in Pittsburgh's Hill District, 'Radio Golf' is the concluding play in August Wilson's monumental ten-play cycle chronicling African American life during the 20th century.

Winner! 1990 Pulitzer Prize for DramaWinner! 1990 Drama Desk Award, Outstanding New Play Nominee! 1990 Tony Award, Best Play Nominee! 2013 Outer Critics Circle Award, Outstanding Revival of a Play Nominee! 2013 Drama League Award, Outstanding Revival of a Play It is 1936 and Boy Willie arrives in Pittsburgh from the South in a battered truck loaded with watermelons to sell. He has an opportunity to buy some land down home, but he has to come up with the money right quick. He wa

Henry Loomis turns up at a boardinghouse to look for his missing wife.

Finalist! 2000 Pulitzer Prize in DramaPeddling stolen refrigerators in the feeble hope of making enough money to open a video store, King Hedley, a man whose self worth is built on self delusion, is scraping in the dirt of an urban backyard trying to plant seeds where nothing will grow. Getting, spending, killing and dying in a world where getting is hard and killing is commonplace are threads woven into this 1980's installment in the author's renowned cycle of plays about the black ex

August Wilson has already given the American theater such spell-binding plays about the black experience in 20th-century America as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," " and the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Fences. In his second Pulitzer Prize-winner, The Piano Lesson," " Wilson has fashioned his most haunting and dramatic work yet.

At the heart of the play stands the ornately carved upright piano which, as the Charles family's prized, hard-won possession, has been gathering dust in the parlor of Berniece Charles's Pittsburgh home. When Boy Willie, Berniece's exuberant brother, bursts into her life with his dream of buying the same Mississippi land that his family had worked as slaves, he plans to sell their antique piano for the hard cash he needs to stake his future. But Berniece refuses to sell, clinging to the piano as a reminder of the history that is their family legacy. This dilemma is the real "piano lesson," reminding us that blacks are often deprived both of the symbols of their past and of opportunity in the present.

Pulitzer Prize-winner August Wilson's "Seven Guitars" is the sixth chapter in the continuing theatrical saga that explores the hope, heartbreak, and heritage of the African American experience in the twentieth century. Winner of the New York drama Critics Circle award for Best New Play, it is "a play whose epic proportions and abundant spirit remind us of what the American theater once was".--Vincent Canby, "The New York Times".

In a jazz-era Chicago recording studio, musicians await the great blues diva.

Set during the civil rights movement, at the lunch counter of Memphis Lee's diner.

A petty thief named King returns after seven years in prison to the devastation of Reaganomics.

From Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson comes a one-man show that chronicles his life as a Black artist in the Hill District in Pittsburgh. From stories about his first jobs to his first loves and his experiences with racism, Wilson recounts his life from his roots to the completion of The American Century Cycle. How I Learned What I Learned gives an inside look into one of the most celebrated playwriting voices of the twentieth century.

Finalist! 1992 Pulitzer Prize in Drama This is the 1960s chapter of the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright's decade by decade saga of ordinary African Americans in this turbulent century. It takes place in Memphis Lee's coffee shop in a Pittsburgh neighborhood that is on the brink of economic development. Focus is on the characters who hang out there: a local sage, an elderly man who imparts the secrets of life as learned from a 322 year old sage, an ex con, a numbers runner, a laconic

Drama / Casting: 6m, 5f / Scenery: Interior Sets

Set in a black boardinghouse in Pittsburgh in 1911, this drama by the author of The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars and Fences is an installment in the author's series chronicling black life in each decade of this century. Each denizen of the boardinghouse has a different relationship to a past of slavery as well as to the urban present. They include the proprietors, an eccentric clairvoyant with a penchant for old country voodoo, a young homeboy up from the South and a mysterious stranger who is searching for his wife.

"Gives haunting voice to the souls of the American dispossessed."-The New York Times

"It is Wilson's epic vision, power and poetic sense that lift Joe Turner to strange and compelling heights."-New York Daily News

"A lovely, moving play."-New York Post

Set in 1904, August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean begins on the eve of Aunt Esther's 287th birthday. When Citizen Barlow comes to her Pittsburgh's Hill District home seeking asylum, she sets him off on a spiritual journey to find a city in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Gem of the Ocean is the ninth work in Wilson's ten-play cycle that has recorded the American Black experience and helped to define generations. The Broadway run starred Tony Award winner Phylicia Rashad as Aunt Esthe