Clybourne Park

Clybourne Park    
By Bruce Norris
Leslie Ishii, Guest Director
 
A spin-off of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, this razor-sharp satire examines race and real estate in a fictional Chicago neighborhood. At the heart of this Pulitzer Prize-winning play is a house, acting as the locus of reactions to the shifting racial landscape of a community. In act one, the house is being sold in 1959; following a family tragedy, a white couple is selling their home in a suburban Chicago neighborhood, and their neighbors are dismayed to learn that the buyers are African-American. In the second act, in 2009, the house is again being sold; this time, a white couple is purchasing the home from an African-American couple, and the two butt heads over showing respect for a neighborhood that has become largely African-American. These two racially charged transactions tell the story of a home and a neighborhood, while exploring the broader elements of personal and national history people choose to hang onto, even within the ever-shifting boundaries of our cultural landscape.