‘JITNEY’
TUESDAY 8/6-SUNDAY 8/18. Arkansas Repertory Theatre. $20-$65.
The centerpiece of indispensable playwright August Wilson’s career is a series called “The Pittsburgh Cycle,” a collection of 10 plays about the Black experience, each set in a different decade of the 20th century. All but one of the plays takes place in the Hill District, a group of historically African American neighborhoods in Pittsburgh where Wilson was born. All of the plays were also performed on Broadway, though “Jitney” — Wilson’s treatment of the ’70s and the first of the series that he penned (minus extensive rewrites) — was the last to make it there, premiering in 2017, over a decade after his death. Oriented around a group of unlicensed cab drivers whose livelihood is threatened by the dubious promise of urban renewal, The New York Times deemed “Jitney” a “free-form urban concerto, shaped by the quick-witted, improvisatory spirit that makes jazz soar.” Get tickets here.