By SHARON EBERSON
The remarkable version of Jitney in Italian finished up three days of captivating sold-out Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre audiences on Sunday, ending a quick American tour that celebrated the years-long journey that carried the production from Vicenza, Italy, to August Wilson’s hometown.
Director Renzo Carbonera’s vision of Jitney, played by is realized onstage by a troupe of six, for a cast of nine, in a way that needs no translation for anyone familiar with the play, but projected English supertitles relay the essence of the words. Calling Wilson “the most prolific and decisive African-American playwright of all time,” Carbonara’s Director’s Notes, in a thorough online Playbill, also say how important it was to have an all-Black cast for this adaptation, with Italy’s Black population representing a small but growing minority of Afro-Italians and African immigrants, which saw a surge in the 2010s.
Before beginning its three-city American tour that ended in Pittsburgh, the Italian Jitney caught the attention of The New York Times, in an article where Carbonera noted, “The African ancestry of these actors is much closer than the African ancestry of many Black American people.”
the Italian troupe that performed Jitney in Pittsburgh.
(Image: Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company)
Jitney, representing the 1970s in Wilson’s American Century Cycle, was the first play of his produced, in 1982, by a group called the Allegheny Repertory Theatre. It now enters the canon as the first play of his translated into Italian, no easy task, as Carbonera explains in his Director’s Notes:
“The rhythm and urban flavor of Wilson’s words become an urban rhythm through musicality and sounds. Our experimentation extends the terms, because the stage language is the one of the Italian translation, in whose adaptation Fabrizio Arcuri collaborated as dramaturgy consultant, but with the intention of getting closer to the street language, being aware of its political and social message.”
The Italian adaptation that spent the weekend at the Madison Arts & Entertainment Center in the Upper Hill District, presented by Pittsburgh Playwrights and the August Wilson House, caught the attention of The New York Times,
With stripped-down staging and costuming, all very intentionally in black and yellow, the language barrier is stripped away, as the actors convey the longing and denial, anger and regret, and hope, that play out in a local jitney station – a Hill District car service that took Hill District residents where white cab drivers would not go.
The play does not, apparently, mince Italian words. It runs for 2 hours and 45 minutes, with a perhaps longer than usual intermission at PPTC.
Much of the feat of winning over an English-speaking audience is owed to Wilson’s story, of course, but also to the acting company, with several doubling roles that require emotional upheaval and long monologues, yet they remain strikingly convincing as individuals.
Marcos Piacentini ages up and down as Turnbo, a veteran driver who likes to gossip and demonstrates a hair-trigger temper, and young Booster, the son of jitney station owner Becker, who has returned from 20 years of incarceration for murder. His distinctive hair gives him away, or you might miss that it is one person, until he belatedly transforms onstage.
Likewise the accomplishment of Miguel Gobbo Diaz, in the dual roles of Shealy, a swaggering bookie, and Becker. The latter is a father figure to all, yet his biggest disappointment is in his own son.
Tomiwa Samson Segun Aina as Darnell Youngblood, a 20-something Vietnam veteran working several jobs to provide for his family, conveys the frustrations of being falsely accused of cheating on his girlfriend and the mother of his son, Rena (Rosanna Sparapano, also, as Philmore). You don’t have to know what he is saying to feel the anger welling up inside him, and what it takes to control his anger when nudged by Turnbo.
as a couple trying to build a life together in August Wilson’s Jitney.
(Image: Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company)
Federico Lima Roque doubles as Doub and Fielding, the latter, in a memorable monologue, explaining he had been a prized tailor to Billy Eckstine, but his career was ruined by alcohol.
The production makes evident August Wilson’s oft-referenced thread of failed Urban Renewal that conspired to destroy the vitality of the Hill District. The jitney station is under threat of being torn down, and one character mentions the loss of Memphis Lee’s diner, which is essentially the plot of Two Trains Running.
The static physical nature of many of Wilson plays, taking place in one space, is true of Jitney, but the Italian production creates motion and eye-catching interest with a post-modern approach, thoughtfully making use of stark colors, shadows, and projections — yellow beanbag chairs get quite the workout. For some, it may be a jolt to see that phones were still outlet-bound in the 1970s, and here, a yellow phone with a cord and receiver is central to the set, one of the ways the outside is brought indoors. A yellow bandanna, a hat, a hair wrap and a tie serve as distinguishing characteristics against black wardrobes.
As a backdrop, two rectangular panels that provide English words or are made solid yellow, pierced with shadows, also flash scenes of the gritty urban Pittsburgh of the 1970s, air choked with the smoke of steel mills.
Reminders that we have entered August Wilson’s Pittsburgh abound. Among the words not translated into Italian are “car service,” and the Pittsburgh-centric “Giant Eagle” and “East Liberty.”
The troupe from Italy performed Jitney at Black Rep in St. Louis (May 1-3) and in Cleveland (May 5-6), before ending its American tour in Pittsburgh. On Saturday, the packed audience included Wilson’s daughter, Sakina Ansari-Wilson. More productions are planned for October, in the South. Wherever it goes, it carries the heart of August Wilson’s work and his hometown of Pittsburgh with it, along with an insight into how the late great playwright can reach into the soul of aspiring people of color, wherever they are.
after Saturday night’s performance in Pittsburgh.
(Image: onStage Pittsburgh)
FOR MORE ABOUT THE ITALIAN ‘JITNEY’:
Jitney was first translated into Italian by Angela Soldà, and produced by Sardegna Teatro and La Piccionaia. Carbonara, who first read Jitney on a plane ride, had been to Pittsburgh and spoke at the University of Pittsburgh and the August WIlson House, as he gathered momentum to take the production that was created in Vicenza to the United States. For more information about The Wilson Project, visit https://www.piccionaia.org/the-wilson-project_en/.
Categories: Arts and Ideas, Our Posts, Reviews
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