Clybourne Park at Spotlighters Theatre

CLYBOURNE PARK written by Bruce Norris directed by Jen Sizer Mar 7 - Mar 30, 2025 Thu, Fri & Sat at 8pm; Sun at 2pm

Tickets at www.spotlighters.org/clybourne THE STORY: Clybourne Park explodes in two outrageous acts set fifty years apart. Act One takes place in 1959, as white community leaders anxiously try to stop the sale of a home to a black family. Act Two is set in the same house in the present day, as the now predominantly African-American neighborhood battles to hold its ground in the face of gentrification. Recipient of the Tony Award® for Best Play and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.. Bruce Norris' second Horizons play is Clybourne Park, about white flight and gentrification, which features racist jokes, unspeakable contempt, and mental images that would make Mamet blush. It’s also a subtle and well-crafted piece of theater. While Clybourne Park rips the p.c. mask off polite gentrifiers, Norris notes that his parents moved his family from their Houston neighborhood in part to avoid busing, and that “my primary exposure to anyone African-American up until I was 14 was our maid. There’s no way to escape the fact that I’m a racist,” he adds. “I’d like to imagine I was an android who had only pure thoughts, but I’m a human, and I’m an animal. And I think that’s true for everyone.” (New York Times)

There is no official rating system for live theatre. We encourage you to use your judgment based on your child's age and maturity level. This production includes language that many will find racially and ethnically offensive. This is the design of the playwright, to have the audience face and confront the blatant racism of the 1960s and today.