\u201cIt made all the sense in the world to do it right where it all began, in the Hill District,\u201d said Denise Turner, executive director of the nonprofit August Wilson House<\/a>, who helped bring the show to town. \u201cThe themes in Mr. Wilson\u2019s plays are universal themes. He did that and captured it through the Black experience, but they are universal themes to everyone. And this shows that his language is just not local, regional, national \u2014 that there\u2019s an international reach for his voice.\u201d<\/p>\n A car ride through the Hill<\/p>\n Wilson is best known for his Century Cycle of plays depicting Black American life in each decade of the 20th century, including Pulitzer-winners \u201cFences\u201d and \u201cThe Piano Lesson.\u201d While his work has been translated for performances in other languages, including Chinese and Spanish, Sardegna Teatro and La Piccionaia Centro Produzione Teatrale\u2019s touring \u201cJitney\u201d is the first Wilson-in-translation ever staged in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n Courtesy of Renzo Carbonera<\/p>\n Renzo Carbonera directs the Italian-language “Jitney.”<\/p>\n The show was sparked by a chance encounter seven years ago.<\/p>\n Italian filmmaker Renzo Carbonera, in town to show one of his films at a festival at the University of Pittsburgh, was being driven through the Hill. Carbonera said his hired driver, a Black man, told him about Wilson, of whom Carbonera had never heard. Then on his way out of town, a festival organizer with whom he\u2019d spoken about Wilson handed him a copy of \u201cJitney\u201d that he read on the plane home.<\/p>\n Carbonera was hooked by this story set in the 1970s, among unlicensed cab drivers, centering on the bitter relationship between an estranged father and son.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter that I read all the August Wilson plays,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Carbonera, coincidentally, already wanted to branch into theater and to work more with Black Italian actors. So in 2023, he directed his country\u2019s first-ever all-Black stage production. It was \u201cJitney,\u201d translated into Italian. (Carbonera continued to visit Pittsburgh; the Italian \u201cJitney\u201d was the subject of a short documentary<\/a> made by Pitt professor Carl Kurlander and Pitt film students.) <\/p>\n Carbonera said the translation, by Angela Sold\u00e0, doesn\u2019t try to replicate Wilson\u2019s version of Black American English. But as refined in collaboration with the cast of the 2023 production, it seeks to honor the spirit of the original.<\/p>\n \u201cWe try to be as faithful as we can to the original text, original words, but we also put in some Italian slang,\u201d Carbonera said earlier this month, in a video call from Sardinia. \u201cWhat came out is definitely not what it is in the United States for an American audience.\u201d<\/p>\n Pittsburgh audiences will recognize the technically untranslatable word \u201cjitney\u201d in the dialogue, but as for English-speaking audiences in other cities, Wilson\u2019s original text will be projected in supertitles on the stage.<\/p>\n A new look<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the play\u2019s look might be nearly as surprising to fans of Wilson\u2019s work as will be the sound of the translated dialogue.<\/p>\n Laura Farneti<\/p>\n \/<\/p>\n Courtesy of Renzo Carbonera<\/p>\n The Sardegna Teatro\/La Piccionaia production uses a minimalist set.<\/p>\n Theater companies have long staged Wilson\u2019s plays on naturalistic sets that capture the grit of working-class Pittsburgh. Carbonera\u2019s \u201cJitney\u201d is artier, with minimalist sets, a stylized, Pittsburgh-centric color scheme of black and gold, and even some video projections. Even the costumes are stylized, black-and-gold outfits, rather than the authentic, \u201970s-style garb audiences saw when Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Co. staged \u201cJitney\u201d in the backyard of the August Wilson House in 2022.<\/p>\n But Playwrights founder and artistic director Mark Clayton Southers said the new show constitutes a welcome departure.<\/p>\n Southers was among those who worked with the Wilson House\u2019s Turner to bring the Italian \u201cJitney\u201d to the U.S. After its premiere in Sardinia in April, Carbonera and the cast flew to U.S. to take the stage at St. Louis\u2019 Black Rep<\/a> (May 1 to 3) and Cleveland\u2019s Powerful Long Ladder<\/a> (May 5 and 6). After that, they’ll head back for another Italian date; they’ll be back for some fall performances in the American South, followed by more dates in Italy.<\/p>\n Southers knew Wilson and regards him as a mentor, and since founding Playwrights has surely directed more productions of Wilson\u2019s plays than anyone in town. But he said after seeing \u201cJitney\u201d some 100 times, he\u2019s ready for something new.<\/p>\n \u201cI think if they tell the story, we\u2019ll get a different type of story, a different type of feel for it, a different type of vibe for it,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to see the same thing!\u201d<\/p>\n ‘Jitney,’ our way<\/p>\n In \u201cJitney,\u201d Wilson tells a story of fathers and sons, of love and jealousy and, not least, of a workplace \u2014 a jitney station of the sort where, as a young man, Wilson himself sometimes hung out to soak in the personalities and atmosphere.<\/p>\n Bill O’Driscoll<\/p>\n \/<\/p>\n 90.5 WESA<\/p>\n August Wilson House executive director Denise Turner stands in the house, where August Wilson was born in 1945.<\/p>\n But while the play\u2019s themes are universal, Wilson came of artistic age in a particular historical and cultural setting \u2014 the Hill District of the \u201960s and \u201970s, and the Black Arts Movement. His plays, most set in the Hill, have a similar cultural specificity, and most American theatergoers who see them have at least some grasp on the history of chattel slavery, segregation, gentrification and everyday racism that inform them.<\/p>\n The Black experience in Italy is very different. Most Black Italians are immigrants or the children of immigrants, and together they make up only 1% or 2% of Italy\u2019s population.<\/p>\n In short, just as there\u2019s no word for \u201cjitney\u201d in a country with good public transportation and no history of licensed cabs that won\u2019t serve certain parts of town, actor Miguel Gobbo Diaz says there\u2019s no real Italian analogue to Black American culture.<\/p>\n Gobbo Diaz was born in the Dominican Republic and moved to Italy with his family at age 3. Growing up in the \u201990s, he was the only Black kid around, he said.<\/p>\n![\"man](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778063476_333_.jpeg\"\/)
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