Free Thinking – Landmark: Lorraine Hansberry

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2016

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

With two plays by Lorraine Hansberry being staged in the UK in 2016, Philip Dodd looks at her writing and its resonance today. When A Raisin in the Sun opened in 1959 it was the first play written by a black woman to be performed on Broadway. It is now touring the UK and being broadcast at the end of January on BBC Radio 3. Les Blancs - written 11 years later - is set in an African country on the brink of civil war and is staged at the National Theatre in Spring. The new production of Raisin in the Sun is being directed by Dawn Walton and Yael Farber is in charge of the National's account of Les Blancs - both directors will be joined by the playwright, Kwame Kwei Armah to discuss Hansberry. Kwame Kwei-Armah, who runs Baltimore's Centre Stage, put on what he called the Raisin Cycle in 2013 which included Bruce Norris's Clybourne Park and his own Beneatha's Place, both responses to Hansberry. Philip's other guests are the historian Dr Althea Legal- Miller and the anthropologist, Kit Davis.

Les Blancs directed by Yael Farber opens at the National Theatre on March 24th. A Raisin in the Sun directed by Dawn Walton artistic director of Eclipse Theatre company opens at the Sheffield Crucible Studio Theatre on Jan 28th and tours to New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich; Nuffield Theatre, Southampton; Liverpool Playhouse; Watford Palace Theatre; The Albany, Deptford ; The Belgrade, Coventry. A BBC Radio 3 production of A Raisin in the Sun is being broadcast on Sunday January 31st.

Producer: Zahid Warley

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:23.3	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.
0:28.8	Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.
0:32.2	Hello. Castro came to power in Cuba.
0:36.2	The film Ben-Hur was released. Nixon and Khrushchev debated the rights of communism and capitalism, and Matt Charles Parker was lynched by a mob in Mississippi before he could stand trial for raping a white woman. These are just a few of the events of 1959. The year that Lorraine Hansbury's The Raisin in the Sun became the first play staged on Broadway by an African-American woman,
1:01.0	and its author became the youngest playwright at 29 to be awarded the New York's Critics Prize.
1:08.0	Lorraine Hansbury was cursed to live in interesting times.
1:13.1	We live in a nation where everything which is talked about is talked about in terms of the fact
1:21.9	that we are going to be the mightiest, the toughest, the roughest cats going, you know, in the
1:26.4	whole world.
1:31.3	And... the toughest, the roughest cat's going, you know, in the whole world. And when a Negro says something about, I'm tired, I can't stand it no more, I want to hit somebody.
1:37.3	You say that we're sitting here panting and ranting for violence, you know.
1:41.3	It's not right.
1:43.3	Lorraine Hansbury, and ranting for violence, you know. It's not right.
1:50.4	Lorraine Hansbury, addressing a civil rights rally in 63.
1:54.3	Now, she died appallingly young in her 30s,
1:57.5	but her voice can still be heard loud and clear.
2:02.4	Later this month, Raisin in the Sun opens in Sheffield, and it'll be broadcast here on Radio 3. And in March, her third fully-fledged play Le Blanc will open the National in a production
2:08.4	directed by Yale Farber. What did Lorraine Hansbury mean in the 50s and 60s? What does she mean
2:15.5	now? Well, I'm joined from Baltimore by the playwright Kwame
2:18.8	Kueyama, who wrote Beneath's Place in response to Hansbury, from Sheffield by Don Walton,
2:24.5	who's preparing a production of Raisin in the Sun that will tour the country. And here in the studio,
	...

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