Lizan Mitchell (left) as Aunt Ester and Kim Staunton as Black Mary in Gem of the Ocean.

June 23 will be Pitt Night during the run of August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean at the Pittsburgh Public Theater (PPT).

Through the University’s Pitt Arts program, tickets for that date’s 8 p.m. performance of Gem, staged in the O’Reilly Theater, 621 Penn Ave., downtown, will be discounted to $12.50 for fulltime Pitt students (and/or anyone age 26 or younger) and $25.50 for Pitt faculty, staff, and alumni older than 26.

Gem is set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District in 1904, when slavery was still a living memory for the play’s older Black characters—including Aunt Ester, the 285-year-old adviser and seer who leads a spiritually troubled young man named Citizen Barlow on a journey in search of redemption.

Pitt is among the sponsors of PPT’s production. “As an institution that has long been in the forefront of enriching Pittsburgh’s cultural life, the University of Pittsburgh is privileged to join in bringing to a local stage this deeply moving drama by one of the city’s favorite sons,” said Robert Hill, the University’s vice chancellor for public affairs. “It is especially fitting, given August Wilson’s strong links to Pitt.”

Wilson cofounded Pitt’s Kuntu Writers Workshop, and one of his earliest plays—the one-act Homecoming—was staged by the University’s Kuntu Repertory Theatre in the late 1970s. Among the other Wilson plays performed by Kuntu Rep was Seven Guitars, most recently staged on campus May 18-June 3.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Wilson, who died of liver cancer on Oct. 2, 2005, served on Pitt’s Board of Trustees from 1992 to 1995. He received an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Pitt during the University’s 1992 Honors Convocation; he also gave the convocation’s keynote address.
The ninth play that the Pittsburgh-born Wilson wrote in his decade-by-decade chronicle of African American life in the 20th century, Gem is the first chronologically. Other plays in the cycle include Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, set in 1911 (first produced in New York City in 1988); Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, 1927 (1984); The Piano Lesson, 1936 (1990); Seven Guitars, 1948 (1996); Fences, 1957-58 and 1963 (1987); Two Trains Running, 1969 (1992); Jitney, 1977 (original version, 1982, revised 2000); King Hedley II, 1985 (2001); and Radio Golf, 1997 (2005). All of the plays except Ma Rainey are set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District.

To purchase Pitt Night tickets for Gem of the Ocean:

• Visit Pitt Arts at 929 William Pitt Union;

• Contact the PPT’s Becky Rickard at 412-316-8200 ext. 704 or at rrickard@ppt.org; or

• Order tickets online at www.ppt.org. Click on the Gem on the Ocean logo, choose the June 23 show date, choose a seat price level, and then enter promotional code 668. The ticket price will be adjusted to $25.50. The promotional code is not needed when purchasing a $12.50 ticket online. Such tickets will be held at the door, where purchasers must show a valid I.D.