30 Years Later, Seven Guitars Returns With Its Tony-Winning Star as Director

Ruben Santiago-Hudson won the 1996 Tony for Best Featured Actor playing Canewell in this play's Broadway premiere. Thirty years later he directs the same play, and Daniel J. Watts now plays Canewell. Russell Hornsby is Floyd “Schoolboy” Barton, John Douglas Thompson is Hedley, Chanté Adams is Ruby, with Kristolyn Lloyd, Michael Potts and Roslyn Ruff completing the seven. Santiago-Hudson's Wilson work runs from the Tony-winning revival of Jitney to Bynum Walker in Joe Turner's Come and Gone, which earned him another nomination. The photo at the top is from Two River Theater's 2015 production of this play, not the 2026 cast.

Seven Guitars is the 1940s chapter of August Wilson's American Century Cycle, ten plays on Black life in America, and it is set in 1948 in the backyard of a Pittsburgh boardinghouse where neighbours cook, argue, listen to a Joe Louis fight on the radio and talk over each other's plans. Floyd comes home from ninety days in a workhouse with a hit record and a scheme: buy back the guitar he pawned, get to Chicago, and take Vera with him. Hedley is waiting on a fortune Buddy Bolden promised him, and Ruby arrives from Alabama. This is a play, not a blues concert — Junior Mack composed the original music, but what happens on stage is Wilson's dialogue among seven neighbours.

Previews begin Nov 5, opening night is Nov 23, and the run ends Jan 10, 2027; the schedule is posted on lct.org. LincTix is free to join and open only to U.S. residents between the ages of 18 and 35 — $35 to $40.50 per ticket, or $37 at the box office, with a limited number held for every performance and ID checked at pickup. Full-time students can buy $32 rush at the box office two hours before curtain, one per performance with a school ID, though not every performance has them. Lincoln Ristorante is closed on Mondays, so for a Monday curtain book The Smith or P.J. Clarke's around 6 and walk over in under ten minutes. No exchanges or returns.