Park Square to Produce Lorraine Hansberry's Classic A RAISIN IN THE SUN

By: Oct. 13, 2016
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Park Square continues its 42nd season on the Andy Boss Thrust Stage with Lorraine Hansberry's classic and timely A Raisin in the Sun. This fiercely moving portrait of a family living and dreaming on Chicago's South Side in the 1950s was the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway. The Washington Post hails it as "one of a handful of great American plays - it belongs in the inner circle, along with Death of a Salesman, Long Day's Journey Into Night and The Glass Menagerie."

Of the play, director Warren C. Bowles* says, "Issues here go beyond race. This is a play about feminism, about religion in the family life, about the structure of family. What the Andy Boss Thrust Stage gives us that other places haven't is really surrounding this family in their home. We're in the room with them."

A Raisin in the Sun is the tale of the Youngers, a Chicago family on the hopeful brink of progress. When Walter Lee Senior passes, his life insurance payment promises opportunities for better neighborhoods and higher education, but Walter Lee Junior (Darius Dotch*) has his own dreams for the money. When his scheme unravels and the white neighborhood association objects to the family's move, they must decide what happens - in the words of Langston Hughes's poem that gives the play its title - if a dream is deferred.

Hansberry's play has entered the American canon as a classic of midcentury drama and, importantly, as an all-too-rare (at the time) depiction of African American life on the predominantly white Great White Way. Hansberry's intentional depiction of multiple generations, augmented with multiple iterations of American blackness, makes her work a landmark beyond its "first" status. The playwright's powerful yet tender treatment of a striving family remains as timely today as it was a half-century ago.

The cast includes Aimee K. Bryant*, RoBert Gardner, Neal Hazard, Theo Langason, Andre G. Miles, Am'Ber Montgomery,Kevin Sanders Nelson, Cage Sebastian Pierre, and Greta Oglesby* as the Younger matriarch.

The production team for A Raisin in the Sun includes Lance Brockman (Set Designer) A. Emily Heaney (Costume Designer),Michael P. Kittel (Lighting Designer), Evan Middlesowrth (Sound Designer), and Sadie Ward (Properties Designer).

A Raisin in the Sun Performance Schedule: Previews begin Friday, October 28, and continue through Thursday, November 3.November 4 is Opening Night, and the run continues through November 20. Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. except for Saturday andSunday matinees, which begin at 2 p.m. All performances are on the company's Andy Boss Thrust Stage in the lower level of Saint Paul's historic Hamm Building, 408 St. Peter Street.

Ticket prices: Previews: $27 and $37. Regular Run: $40 and $60. Discounts are available for seniors, those under age 30, and groups. Tickets are on sale at the Park Square ticket office, 20 W. Seventh Place, or by phone: 651.291.7005, (12 noon to 5 p.m.Monday through Friday), or online at www.parksquaretheatre.org.

*Member, Actors Equity Association



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