August Wilson’s JITNEY

Arizona Theatre Company is privileged to welcome Lou Bellamy as director of August Wilson’s JITNEY.  Mr. Bellamy is Founder and Artistic Director of Penumbra Theatre Company in St. Paul, Minnesota. He has been a member of the University of Minnesota’s faculty for 28 years and is currently appointed to the rank of Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance. Among the awards he has received for excellence in arts and education are the W. Harry Davis Foundation Award for Leadership in Afro-centric Education; the Links Award in Recognition of Excellence in Black Theatre; a doctorate from Hamline University; and the 2006 McKnight Distinguished Artist Award, in recognition of artistic excellence spanning three decades as a producer and director at the nation's preeminent African American theatre.

ATC: You were very good friends and a professional collaborator for many years with JITNEY’s playwright, August Wilson.  When and how did you first meet him?

LB: I met August Wilson on the very first night he found himself in the Twin Cities.  He had been invited to come and see Penumbra Theatre Company (of which I am founding artistic director) by his good friend Claude Purdy.  I had hired Mr. Purdy to direct at Penumbra.  Mr. Purdy was impressed by the resources seemingly available in Minnesota as well as the creative team that I had assembled at Penumbra.  Years later, I was present when Mr. Wilson described that first encounter and the effect that Penumbra Theatre had on him. “When I walked through the doors of Penumbra Theatre, I did not know that I would find life-long friends and supporters that would encourage and enable my art.  I did not know I would have my first professional production, a musical satire called Black Bart and the Sacred Hills.  I did not know then what Penumbra Theatre would come to mean to me and that there would come a time when Penumbra would produce more of my plays than any other theatre in the world.  And that their production of The Piano Lesson would become not only my favorite staging but a model of style and eloquence that would inspire my future work.  I only knew that I was excited to be in a black theater that had real lights, assigned seats and a set that was not a hodgepodge of found and borrowed props, as had been my experience with all the black theater I had known. I became a playwright because I saw where my chosen profession was being sanctioned by a group of black men and women who were willing to invest their lives and their talent in assuming a responsibility for our presence in the world and the conduct of our industry as black Americans.” (August Wilson, 1997)

ATC: How would you describe your creative collaboration with August Wilson over the years?

LB: Largely teacher/student.  Mr. Wilson, through his writing as well as through many, many discussions; over meals, in cars, backstage, in living rooms, and over drinks, modeled a particular kind of truth and courage.  He was fiercely proud of who he was and the potential for the individual to accomplish anything.  I’ve heard him say on many occasions, “We are what we imagine ourselves to be.  And we can only imagine that which is possible.”  His intelligence was shared among his friends in a sort of easy and unaffected manner.  He was a consummate theatre craftsman and wonderful storyteller.  He had a phenomenal memory.  I remember once, while I was playing Troy Maxon in Fences, I asked him about a particular line and why it wasn’t getting the response that I thought it should.  Remember now, that Troy Maxon speaks for pages and is given a short comment by one of the other characters.  He then goes on to speak for several more pages.  I was, at this point, just thankful that I could get through the lengthy monologues without dropping out of character, or blowing a line.  Well, we were walking down Selby Avenue in St. Paul and August answered that I was treating the punctuation in the line that was giving me problems incorrectly.  “It’s a period,” he said.  “You’re treating it like a comma.”  All I could do was shake my head and keep walking.

Mr. Wilson cared deeply about the manner in which his work was presented.  He exercised control of casting and creative decisions more consistently and thoroughly than any playwright with whom I’ve come into contact.  I’m proud to say that whenever I produced and directed his work, those decisions were left up to me.  I’ve always understood that to be a reflection of his confidence in my intent, my preparation, and in my ability to do good work.  I endeavor to prove him correct in his estimation of my craft and character.

ATC:  JITNEY is the story of a group of unlicensed cab drivers working in Pittsburgh’s Hill District during the 1970s. What is it about this play that you think resonates so deeply with audiences?  Why do you think August Wilson’s plays have such universal appeal?

LB: There are so very many touch points where one might engage the text.  As in most of Mr. Wilson’s plays, the characters maintain an environment that is at once self-affirming and supportive while forces outside (literally and figuratively) of their control buffet them about.  Their tenacity, their struggle, their potency, swagger, and decency in the face of such odds makes them easy to identify with.  The fullness of Mr. Wilson’s characterizations frames and places in relief the obvious - that the neighborhood will change, members of the community will die, whole neighborhoods will be bought and sold, but life, values and culture will go on.  Their struggle is a timeless one - the underdog against the powerful.  The seemingly weak against the seemingly strong.  Then, there is the prodigal son, returned home to confront his past and his father.  Both men are reflections of one another and in their high stakes confrontation, they reveal themselves but cannot cross the gulf that life, choice, and principle have placed between them.   Or, the young lovers trying desperately to build and maintain family in the face of staggering odds.  All this, with some of the funniest and the most entertaining stories in American theater make JITNEY, for most theater goers, wonderfully rewarding and achingly beautiful.

ATC:  You have directed this play several times - what has kept you coming back to it over the years?  Have you approached it differently at different points in your life?

LB: All of Mr. Wilson’s plays are like old friends to me.  I honed my craft working on them.   I heard the stories before they became plays.  I’ve watched an idea transform itself from barely a character sketch to a fully rounded piece of art.  Mr. Wilson is of great worth to the theater and to American letters for a host of reasons.  Reassigning historical antecedents in his work and placing African Americans at the center of his interrogation, rather than at the periphery is, in itself, revolutionary in American letters.  What makes me keep coming back to the work is that it allows me to explore the limits of the human condition while firmly situated within the African American experience.  His work, for me, strikes a universal chord without losing its cultural specificity.   It is difficult to bring off and demands that I reach into myself and my craft farther than any playwright has demanded that I go.  I never fail to learn more about myself and my world by engaging the work and the journey is always rewarding.

ATC:  What is the next project on which you will be working?

LB: I’ll be directing a production of August Wilson’s Two Trains Running at Signature Theatre in New York.  It opens on December 3, 2006.

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