"a way that mimicked how real women speak so she could draw her readers' focus to the experience of reading and listening. In December 1974, Shange performed the first incarnation of her choreopoem with four other artists at a women's bar outside Berkeley, California. After moving to New York City, she continued work on ""for colored girls..."", which went on to open at the Booth Theatre in 1976, becoming the second play by a black woman to reach Broadway, preceded by Lorraine Hansberry's ""A Raisin in the Sun"" in 1959. Shange updated the original choreopoem in 2010, by adding the"
"To Be Young, Gifted and Black (play) ""To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in her Own Words"", was written by Lorraine Hansberry, an American writer best known for her 1957 play ""A Raisin in the Sun"", a play that made Hansberry the first black author of a show on Broadway. After her death in 1965, Hansberry's ex-husband and friend, songwriter and poet Robert Nemiroff, collated her unpublished writings and adapted them into a stage play that first ran from 1968 to 1969 off Broadway. It was then converted into an equally successful autobiography with the same title. The"
"Clybourne Park Clybourne Park is a 2010 play by Bruce Norris written as a spin-off to Lorraine Hansberry's play ""A Raisin in the Sun"" (1959). It portrays fictional events set before and after the Hansberry play, and is loosely based on historical events that took place in the city of Chicago. It premiered in February 2010 at Playwrights Horizons in New York. The play received its UK premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in London in a production directed by Dominic Cooke. The play received its Chicago premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in a production directed by Steppenwolf ensemble member"
"winning the Tony Award for Best Musical, with the book by Nemiroff, music by Judd Woldin, and lyrics by Robert Britten. ""A Raisin in the Sun"" was revived on Broadway in 2004 and received a Tony Award nomination for Best Revival of a Play. The cast included Sean Combs (""P Diddy"") as Walter Lee Younger Jr., Phylicia Rashad (Tony Award-winner for Best Actress) and Audra McDonald (Tony Award-winner for Best Featured Actress). It was produced for television in 2008 with the same cast, garnering two NAACP Image Awards. Nina Simone first released a song about Hansberry in 1969 called ""To"
"Hughes lived on the South Side and wrote for prominent African American newspaper, the ""Chicago Defender"" before moving to New York and becoming a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. The post-World War II years brought poet Gwendolyn Brooks to the Culture Coast, where she wrote her collection ""Annie Allen"", the first work by an African American to win a Pulitzer Prize. Dramatist Lorraine Hansberry later made history as the first black woman produced on Broadway with the 1959 debut of her play ""Raisin in the Sun"", a fictionalized account of her family's experience of trying to move into a"
"and '60s are Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez. During this time, a number of playwrights also came to national attention, notably Lorraine Hansberry, whose play ""A Raisin in the Sun"" focuses on a poor Black family living in Chicago. The play won the 1959 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. Another playwright who gained attention was Amiri Baraka, who wrote controversial off-Broadway plays. In more recent years, Baraka became known for his poetry and music criticism. It is also worth noting that a number of important essays and books about human rights were written by the leaders of the Civil"
"Raisin (musical) Raisin is a musical theatre adaptation of the Lorraine Hansberry play ""A Raisin in the Sun"", with songs by Judd Woldin and Robert Brittan, and a book by Robert Nemiroff (who was Hansberry's former husband) and Charlotte Zaltzberg. The story concerns an African-American family in Chicago in 1951. The musical was nominated for nine Tony Awards, winning two, including Best Musical, and the Broadway production ran for 847 performances. In Chicago in 1951, an African-American family, Ruth Younger, her husband Walter Lee Younger, their son Travis and Walter's mother are living in a cramped apartment. Walter is a"
"The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window is the second and last staged play by playwright Lorraine Hansberry, author of ""A Raisin in the Sun"". The play is a story about a man named Sidney, his pitfalls within his personal life, and struggles in Bohemian culture. The play premiered October 15, 1964 and received mixed reviews. It encompasses themes of race, suicide, homosexuality, and also focuses on individual characters learning to cope with life. Lorraine Hansberry, the author of ""The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window"", had several works produced prior to this piece. Hansberry used"
"speech with frog-throated sass from the heavy-breathing viols."" ""The New York Times"" also reported that there are ""ovations every night at the 46th Street Theatre for 'Raisin'. But they are for the cast, not individual performers. There are no stars... It was at the Arena Theater in Washington, where the play first opened this spring, that Mr. McKayle said he started evolving the ensemble-acting concept."" Raisin (musical) Raisin is a musical theatre adaptation of the Lorraine Hansberry play ""A Raisin in the Sun"", with songs by Judd Woldin and Robert Brittan, and a book by Robert Nemiroff (who was Hansberry's"
"Jewish couple living in the South who dress up in Civil War era attire to attend the premiere of ""Gone with the Wind"". In Berlin, a Third Reich officer at a Nazi death camp is in love with his prisoner, a black, male cabaret performer, yet still allows him to be tortured. The play premiered at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, D.C. on March 30, 2009. ""The Etiquette of Vigilance"" is a contemporary re-imagining of Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun. It follows the story of Travis, the youngest male of the Younger family original play,"
"stating the application of ""res judicata"" in this case would violate Fourteenth Amendment. The play ""Raisin in the Sun"" was inspired by Lorraine Hansberry's time in the neighborhood after her father won the repeal of restrictive covenants. The result of ""Hansberry v. Lee"" led to racial succession. White tenants were often evicted to make way for higher-paying African American renters. By 1950, the subdivision was over 99 percent African American. The Hansberry case is a seminal case in civil procedure and class action legal studies. It is also considered an important study of African American, Chicago and legal history. While"
"(2011), and the list goes on. Following the release of cinematic adaptations of the play ""A Raisin in the Sun"" (1959), by Lorraine Hansberry, and the novel ""To Kill a Mockingbird"" (1960), by Harper Lee, the films of the blaxploitation genre of the 1970s reflected continued discontent over the social and racial inequality of non-white people in the United States and functioned as counterbalance to the trope of the white savior. Then in the 1980s, continued cultural hypersegregation led to the common misbelief, by many American white people, that the nation had reached a post-racial state of social relations, which"
"a raisin in the sun?"" At the young age of 29, she won the New York's Drama Critic's Circle Award — making her the first African American dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so. After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper ""Freedom"", where she dealt with intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry has been identified as a lesbian, and sexual freedom is an important topic"
"Bernard Shaw’s ""The Apple Cart"" (1970). She also acted in such notable plays as Lorraine Hansberry's ""A Raisin in the Sun"", Alice Childress's ""Trouble in Mind"" and James Baldwin's ""The Amen Corner"". She directed James Saunders' play ""Alas, Poor Fred"" for the Umoja Theatre, and also the British premiere of ""Remembrance"", by Derek Walcott at London's Art Theatre in 1987. Her work for television has encompassed being for a time a presenter of ""Play School"" as well as the BBC's lunchtime children's programme ""How Do You Do"", and a wide variety of acting appearances. These include a part in the"
"play was adapted from Lorraine’s letters, interviews, and journal entries. It begins at the start of Lorraine’s life, highlighting her early childhood in a Chicago ghetto to her college years and then later life, including the creation and inspiration for ""A Raisin in the Sun"". Her journey from Chicago to New York was complicated by obstacles she overcame in order to get her play on Broadway and incorporates fragments of her personal life, such as her marriage and involvement in politics (e.g., her strong support of racial and gender equality). The play concludes with her battle with terminal illness, from"
"to write for a paper as an author before deciding to write her first play. Before becoming a playwright, she actively wrote for groups promoting African-American rights. She published a piece produced by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, advocating for the well being of African Americans. Hansberry's personal past, values, and involvement with ideological movements heavily influenced thematic elements in her plays. Her first piece as a playwright, ""A Raisin in the Sun"", drew attention to her as not only an author but as playwright. This piece received several awards and was the first Broadway production written by an African-American"
"revelatory story."" Van Der Sluijs went on to direct for Arcola Theatre's Grimeborn Festival, and was awarded an inaugural TS Eliot Exchange bursary between the Old Vic Theatre and the Public Theater New York City. Van Der Sluijs has directed for a range of venues and companies in the Netherlands, often directing Dutch language premieres of British and American plays. He directed the first Dutch production of Lorraine Hansberry's ""A Raisin in the Sun"", for which production company Well Made Productions won the 2017 Amsterdam Award for the Arts, as well as its response play ""Beneatha's Place"" by Kwame Kwei-Armah"
"Jordan's ""His Own Where"" (1971), though Alice Walker's epistolary novel ""The Color Purple"" is a much more widely known work written entirely in AAVE. Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 play ""A Raisin in the Sun"" also has near exclusive use of AAVE. The poetry of Langston Hughes uses AAVE extensively. Some other notable works that have incorporated representations of black speech (with varying degrees of perceived authenticity) include: As there is no established spelling system for AAVE, depicting it in literature is instead often done through spelling changes to indicate its phonological features, or to contribute to the impression that AAVE is"
"the book of the musical ""is perhaps even better than the play... 'Raisin' is one of those unusual musicals that should not only delight people who love musicals, but might also well delight people who don't"". After the Broadway opening, Walter Kerr of ""The New York Times"" wrote, ""The strength of ""Raisin"" lies in the keen intelligence and restless invention of a musical underscoring that has simply invaded Lorraine Hansbury's once tightly-knit, four-walled, close-quartered play, ""A Raisin in the Sun"", plucking the walls away, spilling the action onto the streets with a jittery down-flight of strings, mocking and matching realistic"
"classes - they don't even own televisions!'""He converted ""Armchair Theatre"" into a vehicle for the generation of ""Angry Young Men"" that was emerging after John Osborne's play ""Look Back in Anger"" (1956) had become a great success, although older writers such as Ted Willis were not excluded. Willis' 1958 play ""Hot Summer Night"" (1 February 1959) was adapted to shift its focus, from an unhappy marriage of parents in the original stage version, onto their daughter's mixed-race relationship with a Jamaican man and the problems they might face if they got married. It was one of the earliest British television"
"Award for Best Play. Over the next two years, ""Raisin"" was translated into 35 languages and was being performed all over the world. In April 1959, as a sign of her growing fame, photographer David Attie did an extensive photo-shoot of Hansberry, at home in her Bleecker Street apartment, for ""Vogue"" magazine. Hansberry wrote two screenplays of ""Raisin"", both of which were rejected as controversial by Columbia Pictures. Commissioned by NBC in 1960 to create a television program about slavery, Hansberry wrote ""The Drinking Gourd"". This script was called ""superb"" but also rejected. In 1960, during Delta Sigma Theta's 26th"
"the United States Supreme Court, when challenged in a seminal case brought by Carl Hansberry. The case is a vital part of legal studies and considered an important part of a broad class of histories. The play ""Raisin in the Sun"" is based on Lorraine Hansberry's struggles in this neighborhood. Due to the non-rectangular shape of the Washington Park community area, the original Washington Park Race Track actually occupied the Southern two-thirds of the Washington Park Subdivision, which is an 8-city block by 3-city block area in northwest corner of the Woodlawn community area and bounded by Dr. Martin Luther"
"Lorraines Hansberry’s Les Blanks,” Revista de Associacion Espanol de Estudios Ingleses y Norteamericanos, 1996. (1-2) pgs 28-36. Journal Article. Les Blancs Les Blancs is a play written by Lorraine Hansberry. It debuted on Broadway on November 15, 1970 and ran until December 19 of that same year. It debuted to heavy criticism. It was Lorraine Hansberry’s final work and she considered it her most important, as it depicts the plights of colonialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is her only play that takes place in Africa, and it uses dance and music both as signifiers of"
"his daughter Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning play, ""A Raisin in the Sun"". Carl Augustus Hansberry Carl Augustus Hansberry (April 30, 1895—March 17, 1946) was an American real estate broker, inventor and political activist. He was also the father of award-winning playwright Lorraine Hansberry and the great-grandfather of actress Taye Hansberry. Carl Augustus Hansberry was born on April 30, 1895 in Gloster, Amite County, Mississippi. He was a son of Elden Hayes and Pauline (Bailey) Hansberry. He and his older brother, William Leo Hansberry, were raised by their stepfather, Elijah Washington. As a young man, he moved to Chicago. He married Nannie"
"1956 musical adaptation of Hilton's novel ""Lost Horizon"", entitled ""Shangri-La"". They also adapted ""Auntie Mame"" into the hit musical ""Mame"" with composer Jerry Herman, which won a Tony Award for its star, Angela Lansbury. Less successful was the Lawrence and Lee collaboration with Herman, also starring Lansbury, ""Dear World"", a musical adaptation of Jean Giraudoux's ""The Madwoman of Chaillot"". Several of Lawrence and Lee's plays draw on events from United States history to speak to contemporary issues. ""Inherit the Wind"" (1955) addressed intellectual freedom and McCarthyism by speaking of a fictionalized Scopes Monkey Trial. ""The Gang's All Here"" (1959) examined"
"much at ease on the stage as in their own homes."" Reviewing the 1940 production for ""The New Masses"", Ralph Ellison wrote that """"Big White Fog"" is like no other Negro play. The author takes a movement which has been passed off as a ludicrous effort by Negroes to ape British royalty and reveals in it that dignity of human groping which is characteristic of all oppressed peoples."" ""Big White Fog"" has been compared by Michael Billington of ""The Guardian"" to the 1959 play ""A Raisin in the Sun"" by Lorraine Hansberry, and the 1930s drama work of Clifford Odets"
"play ""In the Summer House"", which was performed on Broadway in 1953 to mixed reviews. Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and John Ashbery all highly praised her work. ""In the Summer House"" was her only full-length play. It was first performed in 1951 in the Hedgerow Theater in Moylan, Pennsylvania (Blogspot). The Broadway play opened at the Playhouse Theatre December 29, 1953 with music by Paul Bowles, her husband, where it ran for two months to mixed reviews and low attendance (""The New York Times"" ). Around 1963, the play was revived. The play was revived again in 1993 At the"
"first half of the century, many University of Chicago professors lived in Woodlawn. With the Supreme Court ruling outlawing racially restrictive covenants in the 1950s, the combination of the expanding African American urban population, their limited housing options, and exploitive real estate maneuvers that divided up apartments into kitchenettes, Woodlawn began to have its first African American residents. Cayton and Drake described the anxieties and clashes that took place at the edge of the ghetto in ""Black Metropolis"". The play ""A Raisin in the Sun"" is based on the experiences of author Lorraine Hansberry and her family, who were among"
"break during World War II while serving in the U.S. Army Air Force. Among Richards' accomplishments are his staging the original production of Lorraine Hansberry's ""A Raisin in the Sun"", debuting on Broadway to standing ovations on 11 March 1959, and in 1984 he introduced August Wilson to Broadway in ""Ma Rainey's Black Bottom"". As head of the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, he helped develop the careers of August Wilson, Wendy Wasserstein, Christopher Durang, Lee Blessing and David Henry Hwang. Richards was Dean of Yale School of Drama and Artistic Director of Yale Repertory Theatre,"
"crossfire. The title is a reference to Jean Genet's play ""The Blacks: A Clown Show"". The play is about the experience of settlers, natives, and one American journalist in an unnamed African country in the waning days of colonial control. Hansberry originally planned to have a female protagonist, but revised the play so the only black woman has no name and no lines, referred to only as ""woman"". The 1970 Broadway production at the Longacre Theatre was nominated for two Tony Awards, for Best Costumes and Lili Darvas was nominated for Best Featured Actress in a Play her performance as"
"in the episode ""Christmas Joy"". In February 2008, Rashad portrayed ""Lena Younger"" in the television film adaptation of ""A Raisin in the Sun"", directed by Kenny Leon. Starring core members of the cast of the 2004 Broadway revival at the Royale Theatre of Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 play, including Audra McDonald as Ruth Younger, and Sean Combs as Walter Lee Younger. The television film adaption debuted at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and was broadcast by ABC on February 25, 2008. According to Nielsen Media Research, the program was watched by 12.7 million viewers and ranked #9 in the ratings for"
"Les Blancs Les Blancs is a play written by Lorraine Hansberry. It debuted on Broadway on November 15, 1970 and ran until December 19 of that same year. It debuted to heavy criticism. It was Lorraine Hansberry’s final work and she considered it her most important, as it depicts the plights of colonialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is her only play that takes place in Africa, and it uses dance and music both as signifiers of black and African cultures; a concept called the Black Aesthetic. Writer Charlie Morris arrives at the Mission. He meets"
"effort to obtain all available background material on the subject, any derogatory information contained therein, and a photograph and complete description,"" while officers in Milwaukee and Chicago examined her life history. Later, an FBI reviewer of ""Raisin in the Sun"" highlighted its Pan-Africanist themes as dangerous. Hansberry died of pancreatic cancer on January 12, 1965, aged 34. James Baldwin believed ""it is not at all farfetched to suspect that what she saw contributed to the strain which killed her, for the effort to which Lorraine was dedicated is more than enough to kill a man."" Hansberry's funeral was held in"