‘It’s a play about the freedom to dream, to aspire and to own rather than be owned’
“It took us fifty-odd years to learn that it wasn’t really about what we thought it was about,” says Joi Gresham, Director and Trustee of the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust. Gresham is talking about the ending of Lorraine Hansberry's seminal work A Raisin in the Sun, which begins an English tour this month at Leeds Playhouse.
“It really wasn’t about a happy ending. It wasn’t about a desire to be a part of the middle class, and it wasn’t about the desire to desegregate a white neighbourhood. For Lorraine, it was a play about Black freedom. It’s a play about the freedom to dream; the freedom to aspire; the freedom to own, rather than be owned.”
The production is directed by Tinuke Craig, who returns to the Playhouse following her triumphant 2021 production of Jitney by August Wilson. “I’m really excited to share this incredible play with as many people as possible,” she says. “It’s always exciting to tour, as you’re getting to combine the play with such different audiences and different places. You can create a strong base in a rehearsal room but ultimately the final ingredient is the people who are watching it.”
The Broadway production premiered in March 1959 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York. That year it won the Drama Critics’ Circle Award in a season that was notable for such plays as Sweet Bird of Youth by Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill’s A Touch of the Poet. At the time, Hansberry was the first Black woman – and the youngest ever person – to gain the prestigious accolade. She became an instant celebrity.
She was and in-demand interviewee, was on television and was the subject of magazine and newspaper articles – including US Vogue. “There was tremendous interest in her,” said Joi. “Partly because she was extremely articulate and had incredible confidence and composure and was quite pretty to boot. All of that combined made her a fascinating subject.”
A Raisin in the Sun established yet more firsts in the history of Broadway. As well as being Hansberry’s playwriting debut, it was also the first time a Black woman had taken an original script all the way to the most famous theatre district in the world. Its arrival was additionally monumental because there had never been a stage drama with an almost entirely Black cast – Black actors had previously been confined to musicals and minstrel shows.
Joi says: “Lorraine wrote this play out of a desire to create Black characters who were real and who were honest. It required dispelling stereotypical images of Black life that were racist, and misogynist, and kind of iconographic to white supremacy.”
Between the debut of A Raisin in the Sun and her untimely death from pancreatic cancer in the mid-sixties, Hansberry completed four more plays: The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, Les Blancs, The Drinking Gourd, and What Use Are Flowers. But it was activism that she was most passionate about.
Hansberry was tremendously impacted and inspired by her father in that respect – A Raisin in the Sun being directly influenced by a high-profile civil court case in which he fought against discriminatory housing policy in Chicago.
Sixty-five years after A Raisin in the Sun was first introduced to the world, its contemporary relevance is even more striking, and that resonance carries way beyond US borders. Craig says: “There can sometimes be a disconnect when plays are set in the States, but the writing is so vivid that I think it’ll be extremely relatable to audiences here. There are loads of things in the play that remain wholly relevant and relatable; the tangible ones about structural racism and the politics of housing and the pressure and struggle of poverty. There’s a lot of really interesting things in the play about aspiration and how assimilation into a dominant community is often tied up with the idea of success and that’s really questioned in the play.”
Since 1959, the play has been translated into 35 languages and is repeatedly performed all over the world. There have been major productions staged by the National Touring Company of Sweden, Market Theatre in Johannesburg, and in Peru under the direction of renowned actress Ebelin Ortiz.
Despite its grounding in the social and historical context of 1950s America, from country to country, continent to continent, actors and audiences are drawn to this text because it profoundly speaks to the experience of being an outsider, and the great risk associated with pursuing freedom, not just for the self, but for an entire community.
For that reason, says Joi: “A Raisin in the Sun will always be current.”
A Raisin in the Sun premieres at Leeds Playhouse (13-28 Sep) before touring to Oxford Playhouse (2-5 Oct), Lyric Hammersmith Theatre (8 Oct - 2 Nov) and Nottingham Playhouse (5-16 Nov).