“There are always only two trains running. There is life and there is death. Each of us rides them both.” – Playwright August Wilson (1945–2005)
When Open Stage of Harrisburg debuts its production of August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running” on Feb. 5, it will mark the professional theater’s sixth production of the acclaimed playwright’s 10-play series (also known as the “Century Cycle”).
Open Stage began telling the stories and struggles of African Americans in the early ‘90s, soon after its founding. With “Two Trains Running,” the theater continues a 24-year legacy of allowing African-American actors to tell stories of the African-American experience as written by African-American playwrights.
In addition to Wilson’s “Century Cycle,” other notable productions by the theater have included “Crowns,” “’Master Harold’… and the Boys” and the indelible “A Raisin in the Sun.”
Yet, in presenting the works of perhaps the greatest playwright in the African-American dramaturgical diaspora and arguably its most revered (Wilson won a Pulitzer Prize for “Fences” and “The Piano Lesson”), Open Stage has chosen to raise the stakes in the conversation about what it means to be black in America.
“Two Trains Running” is at the apex of this conversation chronicling a decade, the 1960s, which regressed from great American hope to social, racial and political unrest and the resulting assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, as well as the Vietnam War.
More specifically for African-Americans, the laws of Jim Crow led to a full-grown civil rights movement and the assassinations of leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., along with the rise of the Black Panthers and urban riots in Watts, Detroit, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
As such, the seminal question asked in this Tony Award-winning play is: When do we, as African Americans, get our ham? In fact, the question is waved constantly in the face of audiences through Hambone, a disillusioned, mentally immature man who believes a grocery store owner owes him a ham and limits his conversation to the words: “I. Want. My. Ham.
With the timing of this presentation, Open Stage challenges its audience—a predominantly white audience through the years—to answer the aforementioned question, a provocative one, at a time when organizations such as Black Lives Matter are interrupting political campaign speeches and invading malls across the United States to get a largely white American audience to honor the same sentiment, I. WANT. MY. HAM.
From the ghosts that haunt us as a people in “The Piano Lesson” to the blues that consumes us in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and the religion that betrays us in “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone”—even to the dream that escapes us in “Fences”—“Open Stage has provided a vehicle for there to be open dialogue about the issues,” notes veteran actress and company member Sharia Benn.
This is evidenced most by the post-show discussions Open Stage has held for each of the Wilson shows.
Still, in a city that is 52-percent African American (according to the U.S Census Bureau’s 2015 report), Benn and other Open Stage resident actors like Aaron Bomar and Ronnie Banks would like to see more blacks come out to see and hear their voice represented. With Wilson, Bomar believes African-Americans “have their own Shakespeare.”
Perhaps the great irony arising from this statement is that Open Stage has presented the “African-American Shakespeare” far more than it has Shakespeare himself, proving that the history, the legacy, the stories and the experiences of African Americans—yes, black lives indeed—have always mattered throughout the theater’s long history.
“Two Trains Running” runs Feb. 5 to 21. Tickets are $25 to $35 and can be purchased online at openstagehbg.com or by phone at 717-232-6736 or the box office (located in the administrative offices of Open Stage across the elevator lobby from the theater doors). Producer and Artistic Director Donald Alsedek directs a stellar cast that includes Aaron Bomar, Daniel Fordham, Louis Riley, Jennette Harrison, Ronnie Banks, Eric Sabin Sims and Caliph White.
February Theatre Events
At Harrisburg’s Professional Downtown Theatres
Through Feb. 7
“RED VELVET”
by Lolita Chakarbarti
at Gamut Theatre
Fridays & Saturdays at 7:30 pm
Sundays at 2:30 p.m.
Tickets: GamutTheatre.org
Feb. 5 to 21
“TWO TRAINS RUNNING”
a drama by August Wilson
at Open Stage of Harrisburg
Thursdays to Sundays, with these special events:
2/5 Opening night w/reception
2/11 Thrifty Thursday w/limited $15 tickets available
2/14 2 p.m. matinee includes post-show discussion
Tickets: openstagehbg.com
Feb. 17 to March 5
Popcorn Hat Players present
“STONE SOUP”
at Gamut Theatre
Wednesdays and Thursdays, 10 a.m.
Saturdays, 1 p.m.
Tickets: GamutTheatre.org
Feb. 19 to 21
Harrisburg Shakespeare Co presents
“A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM”
Friday and Saturday, 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, 2:30 p.m.
at Gamut Theatre
Tickets: GamutTheatre.org
Feb. 26 & 27 at 8 p.m.
“BILL W. AND DR. BOB”
a staged reading of the hit play
about the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous
at Open Stage of Harrisburg
Tickets: openstagehbg.com
