Civil Rights–Era Pittsburgh Comes to Life on the Central Coast

‘Two Trains Running,’ ‘The Comedy of Errors,’ and ‘How I Learned What I Learned’ at the Rubicon Theatre

'Two Trains Running' poster | Photo: Courtesy

Rubicon Theatre is kicking off 2025 by hosting New York’s The Acting Company on their national tour of August Wilson’s Two Trains Running, which will play in rep with Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. The Rubicon, located in Ventura, is also offering a bonus production, a one-night-only presentation of How I Learned What I Learned, Wilson’s one-man autobiographical play.

Wilson wrote 10 plays in “The Century Cycle,” one for each decade of the 20th century. Two Trains Running takes place during the civil rights era in the late 1960s. The play follows several characters living in the Hill district, a Black community in Pittsburgh, as gentrification starts to squeeze the neighborhood. Says Kent Gash, artistic director of The Acting Company: “As Black working-class neighborhoods are renovated and gentrified … our sense of community — where we can center ourselves and our cultural specificity is celebrated and fully alive — [is] often lost. This is what happened to the Hill district in Pittsburgh, where much of the American Century Cycle takes place. The working-class and middle-class Black community was gutted to make way for the (now-defunct) Civic Arena.”

Two Trains Running also focuses on how these characters are holding onto or reclaiming position during the social upheaval of the late 1960s. “Each of the characters have a different issue with fulfilling their goals or dreams,” says Rubicon Producing Artistic Director Karyl Lynn Burns. “Aside from gentrification, there are issues related to self-worth, employment, and prejudice.” Gash describes the characters as pursuing what is innately already theirs but denied to them in social context. “The forces that galvanized the … civil rights movement are thrillingly engaged in personal terms,” he says. “The struggle continues, which is why the play feels so alarmingly contemporary and prescient.” See Two Trains Running January 18-February 2; A Comedy of Errors January 19, 21, 28; and How I Learned What I Learned on January 27 at the Rubicon Theatre (1006 E. Main St., Ventura). For more information and tickets, see rubicontheatre.org.