A Raisin in the Sun Archives

Three Black actors playing the Younger women in A Raisin in the Sun are seated onstage. Two are on the couch at left, seated at either end.

A Raisin in the Sun comes home to the south side

by Tracy Baim February 13, 2023February 13, 2023

Racial covenants that kept Black people out of certain neighborhoods of Chicago, and across the U.S., are not just a thing of the past. Today, there are organizations including Chicago Covenants still trying to un-do them, and the harm they caused. Chicago-raised playwright Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun is perhaps the best known […]

In the foreground on the left, a white man in white shirt, suspenders, and tan trousers faces a Black woman in a 1950s-style blue dress. Behind them on the left we see a Black man, also in shirt, trousers, and suspenders, and a white woman in a brown suit dress, looking at the argument unfolding between the two characters in the foreground.

Theater Review

She sees you, white American theater

by Kerry Reid November 17, 2022November 30, 2022

Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind made its off-Broadway debut in 1955, but it never made the leap to the Great White Way (emphasis most definitely on “White”). The white producers demanded that Childress give her story about racism in the American theater a happier ending depicting racial harmony. (Pause for irony.) Childress refused at first, […]

Arts & Culture

Tyla Abercrumbie is about more than The Chi

by Janaya Greene November 24, 2021November 24, 2021

Playwright, actor, director, and artist Tyla Abercrumbie remembers when she was called to theater as clear as day. Blue lights beamed from a ceiling as Alvin Ailey dancers weaved and flowed with silk fabrics, making grade school Tyla feel like she was swimming in an ocean as the company of dancers performed their “Wade in […]