Driving Miss Daisy at African-American Shakespeare Company

San Francisco’s African-American Shakespeare Company opens its 2013-14 season with Diablo Actors’
Ensemble’s 2011 production of Alfred Uhry’s DRIVING MISS DAISY. Winner of the 1988 Pulitzer
Prize, DRIVING MISS DAISY is a timeless meditation on race relations in America told through the
complex relationship between an elderly Southern Jewish woman and her black chauffeur. Having
recently demolished another car, Daisy Werthan is informed by her son that she must rely on the services of a chauffeur, a proud, soft-spoken black man named Hoke whom she immediately regards with disdain and who, in turn, is equally unimpressed with her. In a series of absorbing scenes spanning 25 years, the two develop an unlikely bond despite their mutual differences, growing closer to, and more dependent upon, one another.

DRIVING MISS DAISY originally opened Off Broadway in 1987 at Playwrights Horizons starring
Dana Ivey and Morgan Freeman; the play was made into a film starring Jessica Tandy, who won a Best
Actress Oscar, and Morgan Freeman, and was recently revived on Broadway in 2010 starring Vanessa
Redgrave and James Earl Jones, marking its Broadway debut.