7 Things You Need to Know About Two Trains Running

Theater fans, get your ticket to ride ready—The Acting Company returns to the Center for the Arts with August Wilson’s award-winning play Two Trains Running on Sunday, February 16 at 7 p.m. Here are seven things you need to know.

1. The show was nominated for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as the Tony Award for Best Play. Laurence Fishburne won that year’s Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.
    
2. Two Trains Running is one of 10 plays in author August Wilson’s American Century Cycle. These plays explore the experience of African Americans, decade by decade, in the 20th Century.
    
3. Two Trains Running is set amid the civil rights movement, centering on Memphis Lee, an African American diner owner whose business is set to be demolished. While Lee fights for fairness and dignity, his customers struggle with how gentrification is changing their lives.
    
4. The Acting Company, founded in 1972, casts up-and-coming actors in its productions, and has helped launch the careers of actors including Kevin Kline, Patti LuPone, Rainn Wilson, Frances Conroy, and many others.
    
5. The Acting Company won the 2003 Tony Award for Excellence in the Theater.
    
6. Director Lili-Anne Brown hails from Chicago, where she won a Black Theatre Alliance directing award for the Chicago premiere of Passing Strange and a Jeff Award for helming the Chicago debut of Dessa Rose. She served as artistic director of Bailiwick Chicago from 2012-16 and is a 3Arts Make a Wave grant recipient.
    
7. Two Trains Running is touring in repertory with another production from The Acting Company: Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. You can catch it at our sister venue, The Hylton Performing Arts Center, on Saturday, February 15.

Don’t miss what’s sure to be an incredible production when The Acting Company presents Two Trains Running!