“A Raisin in the Sun” – Lorraine Hansberry’s seminal drama about the experiences of a Black family in Chicago opened on Broadway on March 11, 1959. A music salute by John takes the stage on Crosscurrents, Monday March 11th at 8:00 AM. Listen live on102.7fm, or 103.1fm. or https://www.ktoo.org/listen/krnn/
at the The Barrymore Theater
Lorraine Hansberry’s seminal drama about the experiences of a Black family in Chicago opened on Broadway on March 11, 1959.
On March 11, 1959, the original Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry‘s A Raisin in the Sun opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The play, which details the experiences of a Black family in Chicago, was the first by an African-American woman to be produced on Broadway, as well as the first with an African-American director and one of the first to examine African-American life on the cusp of the Civil Rights era. The production transferred to the Belasco Theatre in October 1959 before eventually closing on June 25, 1960.
With a title drawing from a line in Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem” (“What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”), the drama tells the story of Walter Younger and his mother, Lena, who both yearn to move their family out of Chicago’s Southside ghetto. When Lena’s late husband’s insurance check arrives, Lena hopes to use it to buy a house in a white neighborhood—while Walter hopes to invest it in a liquor business.
The production starred Sidney Poitier as Walter Lee Younger, Ruby Dee as Ruth Younger, Claudia McNeil as Lena Younger, Diana Sands as Beneatha Younger, Ivan Dixon as Joseph Asagai, Lonne Elder III as Bobo, John Fielder as Karl Lindner, Glynn Turman as Travis Younger, Louis Gossett, Jr. as George Murchison, and Ed Hall and Douglas Turner as the Moving Men. Poitier and McNeil were both nominated for Tony Awards for the performances; the play also received Tony nominations for Best Play and for Lloyd Richards’ direction.
The young author began working on a play exploring the struggles of a poor, black family living in Chicago, loosely based on her own family’s story. Originally titled The Crystal Stair (a line from the Langston Hughes poem “Mother to Son”), A Raisin in the Sun centers on the Youngers, a lower-class family who is offered a sum of money to stay away from the white neighborhood where they have purchased their dream home.
After a two-year battle with pancreatic cancer, Hansberry died at the age of 34, the same night her second play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, closed on Broadway. A passage from the play is engraved on her gravestone: “I care. I care about it all. It takes too much energy not to care. The why of why we are here is an intrigue for adolescents; the how is what must command the living. Which is why I have lately become an insurgent again.”
SOURCE – Playbill.com, Broadway.com
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