The summer season at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre is populated with works with substantial name recognition — iconic Broadway musical “Hello, Dolly!,” popular movie-musical-turned-stage-musical “Footloose,” and a stage adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.”
Next up for The Rep is a play that isn’t so familiar — “Jitney” by the late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson.
Ken-Matt Martin, The Rep’s interim artistic director, is directing “Jitney” and argues that the drama-comedy set in 1970s Pittsburgh is perhaps more recognizable to audiences than one might guess.
“[‘Jitney’] is not a wholly unknown work,” Martin said. “When I was a student at Parkview, we were reading Wilson plays in class.”
Wilson’s legacy primarily rests on 10 plays chronicling the life of Black people throughout different decades in the 20th century. “Fences,” “The Piano Lesson” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” are titles from Wilson’s “The Pittsburgh Cycle” that have had a robust life on American stages, not to mention movie adaptations.
For Martin, Wilson’s life and creative work is of singular and significant importance. In fact, witnessing a Rep production of Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” as a teenager set him on a path headed directly for a life in the theater. The Wilson exposure provided by The Rep led him to eventually seek out an internship with the company.
“August Wilson is the reason I am in the [theater] business,” Martin said. The adoration Martin has for Wilson’s work extends to the “electric jazz” of the playwright’s dialogue.
Martin is fresh off directing the Chicago premiere of Wilson’s “How I Learned What I Learned,” a one-man autobiographical play originally performed by Wilson himself. The solo show starred Harry Lennix, who has many notable film and TV credits including NBC’s “The Blacklist.”
Martin said that “Jitney” is the first play Wilson wrote in what would become the 10-part series, adding that it’s “the shortest play and sparse in comparison to the other plays that would come later.”
“‘Jitney’ is about a group of men running an unlicensed cab service in Pittsburgh,” Martin said. “People who see it are going to relate to the father and son relationship at the core of it. The three main subjects are family, small businesses and veterans. It’s set in the ’70s and the men in it are coming back from the war.”
Martin doesn’t want to leave the impression that “Jitney” is just so much theatrical spinach, though. He stresses that “Jitney” is “also funny and there is a beautiful romance in the middle of it.”
Chicago actress Ireon Roach will take on the role of Rena, the only woman character in “Jitney” and the girlfriend of a young driver named Youngblood.
“She wants to make sure her family moves together as a unit,” Roach said. “The beauty of August Wilson is his ability to observe. The words in the script, the dialogue, have been said verbatim by women in my family.”
While this is the first time Roach has been cast in a proper Wilson play, she won a national August Wilson monologue competition in 2016. Like Martin, Roach considers her encounter with Wilson’s work while in high school as the beginning of her career in acting.
Mixing Arkansas-connected actors like Steve Broadnax III and Keith Harper with impressive out-of-towners like Ryan Broussard, Martin called his cast “heavy hitters.” As for Arkansas audiences, Martin doesn’t take to the idea that “Jitney” won’t find a receptive crowd at The Rep.
“We deserve a theater that will expand our palates,” Martin said. “I am proud to be from here. I am a proud public school grad. Our mission is to give the people of the state good stories. I know that is what they are hungry for.”
“Jitney” plays at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre Aug. 6-18. Performance times are 7 p.m. Tue.-Thu.; 8 p.m. Fri.; 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Sat.; and 2 p.m. Sun., and tickets range from $20-$65.