Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun was a triumph for its 29-year-old author in 1959, winning the New York Drama Critics Circle award for best play. It opened career avenues in theatre and in the cinema for a cast that included Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee and Louis Gossett, Jr.
The play was a victory for African American arts, as well. Hansberry broke both the color barrier and the gender barrier in American theatre -- with a play based on her family's own experience with restrictive real estate covenants in Chicago, a struggle vindicated by the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1940.
Lisa Jordan's production at Austin's City Theatre acknowledges that history but is not burdened by it. She and the cast find the strength of Hansberry's story where it resides: in the resilience of family.
Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment