Passage Theatre Company presents "Jitney" by August Wilson

Published by New Jersey Stage
originally published: 10/23/2026

(TRENTON, NJ) -- This holiday season, Trenton's only professional theatre company is staging the first-ever performance of an August Wilson play within the state capital. Passage Theatre Company will present August Wilson's Jitney, directed by Zuhairah McGill and starring Passage Theatre Executive Artistic Director Brishen Miller as Booster. The production runs from November 27 through December 20, 2026. The production is supported in-part by funding through the NJEDA's A.R.T. – Phase II Grant Program, Isles, and GoTrenton.

Set in an unlicensed jitney station in Pittsburgh's Hill District, August Wilson's Jitney bears witness to a community standing its ground in the face of erasure. As redevelopment threatens to dismantle both livelihoods and legacy, a group of Black men—drivers, workers, fathers, and friends—build dignity, humor, and survival in the margins of a system never designed to serve them. It is a world Trenton knows well: where official structures fail, people create their own, and joy becomes an act of resistance rather than escape.

At the center is Jim Becker, a hardened owner whose fragile order is shattered by the return of his son, Booster, newly released from prison. Long-buried truths surface, forcing a reckoning between generations as private wounds collide with public struggle. Yet Jitney ultimately insists on something radical: that joy is the answer. Not naïve or accidental, but earned through truth-telling, reconciliation, and the refusal to disappear. In a city like Trenton—where survival itself requires courage—Jitney affirms that community endures, relationships can heal, and even in uncertain times, joy remains possible.

The cast includes Phillip Brown (Becker), Brishen Miller (Booster), Ron Lee Jones (Turnbo), Lamar Cheston (Youngblood), Morgan Charéce Hall (Rena), Aaron Watkins (Doub), Marvin Bell (Fielding), Richard Bradford (Shealy), and Greg Warren (Philmore).

Jitney will run for four weekends, starting with a pay-what-you-can preview on Friday, November 27 followed by opening night on Saturday, November 30. The play will run until Sunday, December 20. Tickets are available for purchase online or by calling (609) 392-0766. Due to some coarse language, Jitney is recommended for audiences age 12 and up. The theater is located at 205 E Front Street in Trenton, New Jersey.

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"I'm proud to have the first August Wilson play open on the Larry Hilton Stage during my time at Passage, not only as the executive producer, but also in the way I started my theatre career, as an actor," shares Executive Artistic Director Brishen Miller. "Before he was a household name, August Wilson spent some time in Trenton, and still has family here. The problems he addresses in the first play written in the Pittsburgh Cycle, Jitney, are still with us today. Our neighborhoods are under attack, our homes and businesses are in jeopardy, and we fight to claim joy in a world divided."

Jitney premiered at the Allegheny Repertory Theatre in 1982. Thirty-five years later, on January 19, 2017, the play made its Broadway debut at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, the Broadway production featured Harvy Blanks, Anthony Chisholm, Brandon J. Dirden, André Holland, Carra Patterson, Michael Potts, Keith Randolph Smith, Ray Anthony Thomas and John Douglas Thompson.

August Wilson (1945 – 2005) was a Pulitzer-prize-winning playwright known for chronicling the experiences of Black Americans during the 20th century. First, through poetry and then through plays, Wilson captured the character and experiences of the African American community, particularly the community of his native Pittsburgh. He is best known for a series of ten plays collectively called The American Century Cycle or The Pittsburgh Cycle which include, Jitney (1982), Fences (1984), Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984), Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1986), The Piano Lesson (1987) and King Hedley II (1999). Wilson received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Fences and The Piano Lesson, and earned nine Tony Award nominations, winning Best Play for 1987 for Fences. All of his plays have received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play.

In 2006, Wilson was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the recipient of Rockefeller and Guggenheim Fellowships, the Whiting Writers Award, the 1999 National Humanities Medal awarded by the President and numerous honorary degrees.

One of contemporary theater’s most distinguished and eloquent voices, August Wilson wrote not about historical events or the pathologies of the black community, but, as he said, about “the unique particulars of black culture…I wanted to place this culture onstage in all its richness and fullness and to demonstrate its ability to sustain us…through profound moments in our history in which the larger society has thought less of us than we have thought of ourselves.”

Passage Theatre Company is committed to creating and producing socially relevant plays and arts programming that deeply resonate with our communities. They strive to be a nationally recognized model of radically inclusive storytelling.