Fri 9/23-Sun 10/9
Bruce Norris’ 2010 play Clybourne Park, which won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play, is an odd creation. It takes off from the celebrated 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun, written by the late Lorraine Hansberry, pre- and post-dating its events, which revolve around a Black family aspiring to buy a house in a white neighborhood in an era of redlining, blockbusting and racial violence against Black families trying to push over Chicago’s rigid color lines. (Hansberry’s own father was an activist who took a case to the Supreme Court challenging “restrictive covenants” which forbade homeowners from selling to certain types of people such as Blacks or Jews.)
The first act of Clybourne Park takes place in 1959, reiterating the environment of the earlier play, while the second takes place 50 years later, as the now mostly African-American neighborhood battles gentrification. It delves into the awkward troubled and even lethal interactions between the neighbors in the community.
The play will launch Ensemble Theatre’s new residency at the Notre Dame Performing Arts Center at Notre Dame College, directed by the theater’s Executive Artistic Director Celeste Cosentino.
It runs Friday September 23 through Sunday October 9, Fridays and Saturdays @ 7:30pm and Sunday @ 2pm. Go here for tickets.
ensembletheatrecle.org/clybournepark