Yet the aspirations Black Americans like Walter Lee and Beneatha nurtured are impossible in this era of segregation. Her daughter, Beneatha (Angela Mahlatjie) yearns to become a medical doctor to “make whole again”. Her son Walter Lee (Bert LaBonté) yearns to join the ranks of the Black middle class. Lena yearns to provide her family with a home. To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly.
Mel Page’s smart set design means we can see into its two small bedrooms at all times, giving a real sense of the family’s entrapment, and heightening the escalating conflicts.Īs the play opens, the family anxiously awaits the delivery of the recently deceased Mr Younger’s life-insurance cheque, a prospect that provokes each of the family members to disclose their hopes and wishes, embodied in the raggedy pot plant Lena carefully tends throughout. in Lorraine Hansberrys prize-winning play A Raisin in the Sun (1959). The play unfolds in the single setting of the family’s shabby, rat-infested apartment on Chicago’s Southside. RAISIN IN THE SUN is a groundbreaking drama celebrating the human spirit, featuring an electrifying performance by Academy Award(r) winner Sidney Poitier (Be. Her son, Walter Lee, has other ideas.įor more information about the production and to purchase tickets, visit Mel Page has created an honest rendering of the family’s shabby, rat-infested apartment. Robert O’HaraĪ Raisin in the Sun follows Lena Younger, who has decided to use her late husband’s life insurance to move her family out of their cramped apartment on Chicago’s South Side. I think now is the perfect time for us to fully acknowledge Hansberry’s queerness and openly celebrate the audacity of the female characters she created in this play written over half a century ago. His directorial vision also explores Lorraine Hansberry’s own legacy in the production and her impact on theater, both past and present.ĭirecting this play now and at a venerable Off-Broadway institution of new and classic work like The Public Theater allows me to open up the play to a new audience. “It’s always struck me as very odd that a play written by a Black queer woman set in a home with three strong Black women has somehow come to be known as a play about a man, and his deferred dreams.” “I’m interested in centralizing the women and their dreams in this play,” O’Hara said. When approaching this new production for The Public Theater, O’Hara focused on the entire ensemble of characters to explore the play’s most pressing ideas. In its history, A Raisin in the Sun has only been revived in New York City three times before now the last off-Broadway rendition was 35 years ago. Directed by Tony Award nominee Robert O’Hara, this fresh look at a classic proves to be as provocative and powerful today as it was in 1959. Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun has come to Astor Place this fall in her Public Theater debut.
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