‘A Raisin in the Sun’ comes home to the South Side at UChicago’s Court Theatre
Senior Artistic Producer Gabrielle Randle-Bent talks directing the famed play and the 'magic of the South Side'
Crammed in a too-small kitchenette apartment, the Younger family waits for a check. This parting gift from Big Walter, the family’s recently deceased patriarch, could be the key to a brighter future and the ultimate American dream: homeownership.
For the first time, the University of Chicago’s Court Theatre is presenting Lorraine Hansberry’s classic A Raisin in the Sun, mere blocks from where the play is set. Hansberry’s award-winning play, the first written by a Black woman to appear on Broadway, seeks to answer a question posed by poet Langston Hughes: What happens to a dream deferred?
“This is a play that’s about the South Side of Chicago—not just in the 1950s, but the South Side of Chicago that began at the dawn of the Great Migration and continues to live with us today,” said Court’s Senior Artistic Producer Gabrielle Randle-Bent, also the play’s director. “It’s about people, who come from people, who came from far away and arrived in Chicago with the hopes of a better life.”
A Raisin in the Sun was inspired in part by Hansberry’s own family. In 1937, Hansberry’s father, Carl, bought a house in Woodlawn, a white neighborhood. His neighbors sued, citing a restrictive covenant barring the home’s sale to a Black person. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court where Hansberry was victorious, helping strike down the discriminatory practice.
Staged 60 years after Lorraine Hansberry’s passing, A Raisin in the Sun runs at Court Theatre through March 9. Court will also host a series of public programs related to the production, including a reading series, discussions on housing justice and film screenings.
We spoke to Randle-Bent after a rehearsal about what it means to stage Hansberry’s beloved play in a classical theatre, the closeness of history and the “magic of the South Side.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
I was struck by how almost claustrophobic the staging feels. People are constantly stepping around each other and moving things around. Was that intentional?
Our scenic designer, Andrew Boyce, found the floor plan of a historic kitchenette apartment and shrunk it by 20%. It felt really important to me that the main conflict of the play was the house. It wasn't that they were poor, or that Walter was reckless. It was that these are people who don't have enough space.
That's another specificity of the South Side. You have these buildings with this grand architecture, that had already lived two or three lives, that were literally scarred—cut to pieces. That's what a kitchenette was. They were not fit for long-term habitation.
What is it like to stage this play, which takes place in a different time, but blocks away from where we are right now?
This isn't some distant, far-off story; Beneatha is my grandmother's age. So what does it mean that this document already feels distant from us?
The work of a classic theater—our work—isn't to freshen it, but to recognize how powerful this text is because of how close it is. These aren't abstract ideas. This is the world of literal yesterday.
My only job is to help people believe—and continue to believe—that the reality of their existence is worthy of not just portrayal, but an elevated art form. Everything in this play is true, or there's a way to find truth in it. And everyone in this room is here because they have access to that truth—both because they're incredible artists, but also because it's the truth of their world. Nearly all our actors are from Chicago. The stories they hold are mythic; they're beautiful. And that's all this play is: the true story of the South Side of Chicago.
What does it mean for you to stage A Raisin in the Sun at Court Theatre for the first time? (Raisin, the musical adaptation, was performed during Court’s 2006/2007 season).
We're in our 70th season and Court Theatre has never done a Lorraine Hansberry play. Once I found out that information, it was the next show I pitched. It's our Christmas Carol, we should be doing it all the time. This first one we just have to do. Then we should do it on the moon, and then underwater, in a snowstorm, set to music, and then backward. It's impossible to do it too much and this play should be the calling card of what it means to make theater in this place. If we want people to take us seriously as a definer of what classic theater is, why wouldn't we step into our legacy?
Why do you think this play has resonated with so many people?
I think there are two answers. The first is because it's just a really good play. It doesn't feel different than Sophocles to me. Really good plays, anybody can get something from.
The second is the magic of the South Side of Chicago, which I will never understand. It has something to do with Mississippi and migration. It has to do with Lake Michigan or maple trees. This place is a cultural epicenter. The second Black people got here, we started doing stuff that changed the whole world.
Because this is Hansberry’s best-known play, a lot of people imagine it as a singular accomplishment. But she is absolutely the product of her environment.
Watching this rehearsal, I couldn’t help but think of Sidney Poitier’s Walter Lee or other iconic performances. How do you hold these in your mind while also making something new?
At Court, we have a history of pushing the limits of what a classic can hold. When doing Shakespeare or Sophocles, Wilson or Miller, there is this opportunity to say: If this play is a classic, we don't have to treat it like it's precious. We can treat it like it's true and it'll hold us. We can ask questions, change things and push up against other things.
Things that are true, things that are useful, you can't break them.
OK, the curtains rise. Everyone's standing. How do you want people to feel as they're walking out of the theater? What do you hope they say to the person they came with?
I am only making this play for the people whose history this is. There is this idea that this has to be a polished, beautiful, noble story of ordinary, working folks striving for something beyond themselves; when it's a bunch of tired, broken, fallible people trying to make the right choice in a world that doesn't care about them.
For someone to say, “That's not a sanitized version of my life and my history, but that's my life and my history on stage and it's beautiful and I feel seen,” would be a really big gift.
