She lived among the artists, intellectuals and social activists in Greenwich Village. Yet Hansberry was writing from personal experience. And there's always this tone of 'Who does she think she is?' " "There was a real resistance and intolerance of it," said Gresham. But when The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window – a critique of white liberalism that takes place in Greenwich Village – debuted in 1964, critics were not as enamored. That play, which realistically depicted a Black family on the South Side of Chicago, took Broadway by storm, became a popular film in 1961 and has subsequently become part of high school curriculums. "She was like the 'It' girl coming out of A Raisin in the Sun," said Joi Gresham, director of the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust. Writing A Raisin in the Sun was both a blessing and a curse for its young Black playwright. Now, the first major New York production in almost 60 years is getting a first-class treatment at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) – it stars Oscar Isaac, of Star Wars fame, and Rachel Brosnahan, best known as the marvelous Mrs. The show had a short Broadway run and has rarely been revived. After playwright Lorraine Hansberry rocketed to stardom in 1959 with A Raisin in the Sun, she followed it up, five years later, with The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |