[On Thursday, 9 June, the Lilly
Awards Foundation unveiled a sculpture honoring the African-American playwright
and activist Lorraine Hansberry (1930-65) in Times Square. The unveiling marked the launch of The Lillys’
Lorraine Hansberry Initiative, which also includes two large scholarships, and
is the first stop on a city- and nationwide tour of the sculpture, To Sit Awhile by Alison Saar of Los Angeles.
[I have collected several articles on The Lillys, the Initiative, the sculpture, and Hansberry to post on Rick On Theater. At the end of this compilation, I have included a short biography of the playwright, who had a remarkable life and career, despite their brevity.]
“LILLY AWARDS
LAUNCHES LORRAINE HANSBERRY INITIATIVE”
by American Theatre Editors
[The article below appeared on the website of American Theatre, the monthly magazine of the non-profit theater association Theatre Communications Group on 2 June 2022 (AMERICAN THEATRE | Lilly Awards Launches Lorraine Hansberry Initiative).]
The initiative will honor the pioneering playwright’s legacy with a touring statue and support for the work of multiple female/non-binary playwrights of color.
new york city: The Lilly Awards Foundation has announced the creation of the Lorraine Hansberry Initiative, which aims to honor the great American playwright and Civil Rights leader’s legacy while investing in those following in her footsteps.
In 1959, Lorraine Hansberry became the first Black female playwright on Broadway with her play A Raisin in the Sun. It continues to be one of the most produced plays in the world, but Hansberry’s contribution to the world was far greater than that single play. Her entire body of work as an artist, journalist, and Civil Rights leader has proven as relevant today as it was during her short lifetime, and deserves recognization as such.
Over 60 years after her pioneering example, female playwrights of color remain the most proportionally underrepresented demographic on American stages. Despite making up 20 percent of the population, holding 20 percent of the undergraduate degrees in English literature and in the performing arts, and being chosen by their peers for over 20 percent of the spots in national playwriting organizations, prior to the unusual programming seasons that followed the murder of George Floyd, they accounted for under 10 percent of professional productions.
“One can draw a straight line from the issue of real estate and racial discrimination that Hansberry pointed to so clearly in A Raisin in the Sun,” said Julia Jordan, the Lillys’ executive director, in a statement, “to the generational wealth gap that is preventing women of color, specifically Black women, from following in her footsteps today.”
The Hansberry initiative includes a unique scholarship to ensure that the next generation is able to follow in Hansberry’s footsteps. Unlike existing university scholarships, this singular grant will be primarily intended to cover the living expenses of three female and/or non-binary dramatic writers of color entering graduate school, with two additional recipients added each year. Each recipient will receive $25,000 for each year of their education, ensuring that they have protected time to write, work with collaborators, and benefit from the guidance of professional mentors in their respective fields. They will go on to create for the stage, television, and film, and their work will reach millions.
We know that graduate school is the primary gateway to a career as a dramatic writer,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage in a statement. “In my 20 years of teaching at the graduate level, I have had only four Black female students. If we want theatre to tell the full story of humanity, we need to nurture the full breadth of talent.”
Through this initiative, the foundation will keep the current national conversation about race, justice, and economic equality going by honoring Lorraine Hansberry. The initiative will add to the growing movement to honor women and people of color with physical monuments, and aims to alleviate the financial inequality that discourages women and non-binary playwrights of color from pursuing graduate degrees in her chosen art form.
The Initiative also includes a statue of Hansberry that will tour the nation in 2022-23 to raise public awareness of her work and teachings. Created by the renowned sculptor Alison Saar, the statue is titled To Sit Awhile, and features the figure of Hansberry surrounded by five bronze chairs, each representing a different aspect of her life and work. The life-size chairs are an invitation to the public to do just that: sit with her and think.
The statue will be unveiled in a ceremony in Times Square on June 9, which will feature performances as well as remarks from playwright Lynn Nottage and Lorraine’s older sister, Mamie Hansberry. The women and writers of color who have had their work grace Broadway this historic season will be invited to join Mamie Hansberry on stage. This will be followed by a showcase of student works from Speak Up, Act Out: Celebrating Student Voices at the New Victory Theater. The project, a collaboration between New Victory Theater, the Lillys, and 24 Hour Plays, will showcase monologues and short works inspired by Hansberry from NYC middle school students and performed and directed by professional artists, including Quincy Tyler Bernstein, Kate Whoriskey, Russell Jones, Jessica Hecht, April Mathis, Shariffa Ali, and Seret Scott.
The statue’s tour will include three installations in New York City, followed by a national tour of major cities and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. In each city, the Initiative will work with local theatres and social justice organizations to showcase the work of contemporary writers of color concurrent with the sculpture’s placement.
The full NYC tour itinerary is as follows: Times Square (June 9- 12), the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (June 13-18), and Brooklyn Bridge Park (June 23-29). Additional supporting NYC events will coincide with the tour. The Museum of the City of New York will present a panel, titled The Playwright as Activist, on June 13 as part of their Freedom Week programming, which will feature a conversation among playwrights Lynn Nottage, Lisa Kron, and Erika Dickerson-Despenza. The Drama Book Shop will dedicate their display space for the month of June to works by and about Hansberry and contemporary writers of color.
The entire Lorraine Hansberry Initiative is budgeted at $3,500,000. To date, $2,200,000 has been raised. To make a donation to support this important work, please visit the Lorraine Hansberry Initiative.
The Lilly Awards Foundation is nonprofit whose mission is to celebrate the work of women in the theater and promote gender parity at all levels of theatrical production. Founded in 2010, the nonprofit is named for Lillian Hellman, a pioneering American playwright. The annual Lilly Awards recognize extraordinary female writers, composers, directors, designers, producers, and advocates. As of 2019, the foundation had a budget of approximately $261,853.
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“STATUE OF
LORRAINE HANSBERRY UNVEILED IN TIMES SQUARE JUNE 9”
by Andrew Gans
[On 9 June 2022, the day of the sculpture’s unveiling, the national theater magazine Playbill published the following article on its website (at Statue of Lorraine Hansberry Unveiled in Times Square June 9 | Playbill).]
The statue is part of the The Lilly Awards Foundation’s Lorraine Hansberry Initiative, honoring the late playwright.
The Lilly Awards Foundation unveils a statue of playwright Lorraine Hansberry June 9 at 4 PM in Times Square. The statue is part of the Foundation’s Lorraine Hansberry Initiative, honoring the late American playwright and civil rights leader’s legacy while investing in those following in her footsteps.
In 1959 Ms. Hansberry became the first Black female playwright produced on Broadway with her landmark play A Raisin in the Sun.
Maquette of To Sit Awhile by Alison Saar.The statue will subsequently tour the country to raise awareness of the full breadth of her work and teachings. Created by sculptor Alison Saar, the statue is entitled “To Sit Awhile,” and features the figure of Hansberry surrounded by five bronze chairs, each representing a different aspect of her life and work. The life-size chairs are an invitation to the public to do just that: sit with her and think.
The June 9 unveiling in Duffy Square features a performance from Tony winner (and 2022 Tony nominee) LaChanze, plus remarks from playwright Lynn Nottage; Ms. Hansberry’s older sister, Mamie Hansberry; Tony nominee LaTanya Richardson Jackson; and Legal Defense Fund President Janai Nelson.
The ceremony will also include a photo moment honoring several of the BIPOC, female, and/or LGBTQ+ writers, composers, and lyricists whose work graced Broadway stages this season, including Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive), Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Lackawanna Blues), Jeanine Tesori (Caroline, or Change), Masi Asare (Paradise Square), Lucy Moss (SIX), Christina Anderson (Paradise Square), and more.
An invitation-only showcase of student works from the New Victory Theater’s Speak Up, Act Out: Celebrating Student Voices will follow. The project, a collaboration between New Victory, the Lillys, and 24 Hour Plays, showcases monologues and short works inspired by Hansberry from NYC middle school students, performed and directed by professional artists, including Quincy Tyler Bernstein, Kate Whoriskey, Russell Jones, Jessica Hecht, April Mathis, Shariffa Ali, and Seret Scott.
The statue will remain in Times Square through June 12, followed by two other New York City installations: The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (June 13–18) and Brooklyn Bridge Park (June 23-29).
The statue will subsequently tour major U.S. cities—including Philadelphia, Detroit, Minneapolis, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago (Hansberry’s birthplace will enjoy an enhanced and permanent installation in 2023)—and historically Black colleges and universities. In each city, the Initiative will work with local theatres and social justice organizations to showcase the work of contemporary writers of color concurrent with the sculpture’s placement.
The Lorraine Hansberry Initiative also announced a scholarship to make sure the next generation is able to follow in Hansberry’s footsteps, regardless of race, gender, or economic situation. The grant is primarily intended to cover the living expenses of three female and/or non-binary dramatic writers of color entering graduate school, with two additional recipients added each year. Recipients will receive $25,000 for each year of their education, ensuring that they have protected time to write, work with collaborators, and benefit from the guidance of professional mentors in their respective fields.
“One can draw a straight line from the issue of real estate and racial discrimination that Hansberry pointed to so clearly in A Raisin in the Sun, to the generational wealth gap that is preventing women of color, specifically Black women, from following in her footsteps today,” said The Lillys Executive Director Julia Jordan in an earlier statement.
“We know that graduate school is the primary gateway to a career as a dramatic writer,” added Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nottage. “In my 20 years of teaching at the graduate level, I have had only four Black female students. If we want theatre to tell the full story of humanity, we need to nurture the full breadth of talent.”
[The Lilly Awards Foundation began in the spring of 2010 as The Lilly Awards, an outlet to honor the work of women in the American theater. The founders are playwrights Julia Jordan, Marsha Norman, and Theresa Rebeck. The organization is named for Lillian Hellman (1905-84), a pioneering American playwright who famously said “You need to write like the devil and act like one when necessary.”
[In 2015, through a partnership with the Dramatists Guild, the professional association for stage writers, The Lillys gathered their resources and conducted a national survey called The Count, revealing that BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color) women were by far the least represented demographic on U.S. stages. The Lillys spread that information nationwide and have devoted the majority of their funds and efforts to women of color ever since.
[One hundred percent of The Lillys’ financial awards in directing, design, tech, and composing, and the majority of their writing awards have been given to women of color.
[The Lilly Awards Foundation is a 501c3 non-profit whose mission is to celebrate the work of women in the theater and promote gender parity at all levels of theatrical production. The Lillys are dedicated to carrying on Hellman’s spirit and are committed to honoring the work of women in the American theater.
[The Lorraine Hansberry Initiative is the Lilly Foundation’s effort to honor the great American playwright and civil rights leader. Its mission is to invest in those following in her footsteps.
[This year, the Foundation launches the Initiative with a national tour of the sculpture To Sit Awhile by Alison Saar. A life-sized bronze statue of the playwright is seated under her admonition: “Never be afraid to sit awhile and think,” with a space beside her for the public to do just that.
[Beginning next year, a unique $2.5 million scholarship fund will give its first recipients $25,000 per year to cover not only the tuition but the living expenses of two women and non-binary BIPOC dramatic writers in graduate school. The recipients may write for the stage, television, or film, and the scholarships will run for up to three years.]
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“STATUE OF
BROADWAY LEGEND LORRAINE HANSBERRY INVITES PASSERSBY TO SIT AND THINK IN TIMES
SQUARE”
by Steve Overmyer
[On “Broadway and Beyond,” the recurring theater feature of the television station CBS New York (WCBS-TV, Channel 2), aired the following report on its six-o’clock evening news broadcast of 9 June 2022. The website posting of the story, at Statue of Broadway legend Lorraine Hansberry invites passersby to sit and think in Times Square - CBS New York (cbsnews.com), is accompanied by a video of the report, recorded on the site of the sculpture in Times Square.]
new york – The legacy of Broadway icon Lorraine Hansberry is being honored in the middle of the Theater District.
As CBS2’s Steve Overmyer says, her image will be on display to inspire the next generation.
“It’s a little overwhelming in Times Square. It’s crazy, but no, it’s lovely and . . . We’re a little, a few years late to celebrate the anniversary, the 50th anniversary of ‘A Raisin in the Sun,’“ sculptor Alison Saar said.
Hansberry was the first Black female playwright to have her show on Broadway. “A Raisin in the Sun” was a landmark play which opened in 1959. It tells the story of a Chicago family growing up in the middle of segregation.
“Not only is she the first Black woman, specifically, to have a Broadway play produced, but she comes from a tradition of firsts, and so that reminder being a place at the center of our city for all to see is truly beautiful,” Pace University professor Amen Igbinosun said.
It’s an interactive statue with movable bronze chairs inviting all to sit a while and think.
“So much of public sculpture is hands off . . . I wanted this to be a space where people could come and have a conversation and share thoughts and ideas,” Saar said.
“We need more reminders of who we are, and this is not just Black theater history, this is American theater history. This is America,” Igbinosun said.
The statue will only be in Times Square through the weekend before it begins its cross-country tour for all to enjoy.
"I hope they have a better understanding of who Lorraine Hansberry was. I mean, we know at a playwright, but she was also activist for LGBTQ community and African-American equity and women's rights," Saar said.
"We can sit down with this piece and think. Be present. Think, just for a moment, and that's powerful," Igbinosun said.
[Steve Overmyer joined CBS 2 in February of 2011 as a sports anchor and reporter. He hosts Sports Update every weekend on CBS 2 (WCBS in New York City) and WLNY 10/55 (Riverhead, Long Island).]
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LORRAINE HANSBERRY BIOGRAPHY
Lorraine Hansberry was born at Provident Hospital on the South Side of Chicago on 19 May 1930. She was the youngest of the four children of Nannie Perry Hansberry (1893-1966) and Carl Augustus Hansberry (1895-1946). Her father founded Lake Street Bank, one of the first banks for Blacks in Chicago, and ran a successful real estate business. Her uncle was William Leo Hansberry (1894-1965), a scholar of African studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Many prominent African-American social, arts, and political leaders visited the Hansberry household during Lorraine’s childhood including sociology professor W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963), poet Langston Hughes (1901-67), actor and political activist Paul Robeson (1898-1976), musician Duke Ellington (1899-1974), and Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens (1913-80).
Despite their middle-class status, the Hansberrys were subject to segregation. When she was eight years old, Hansberry’s family deliberately attempted to move into a restricted neighborhood. Restrictive covenants, in which white property owners agreed not to sell to Blacks, created a ghetto known as the “Black Belt” on Chicago’s South Side.
Carl Hansberry, with the help of Harry H. Pace (1884-1943), president of the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company, and several white realtors, secretly bought property at 413 E. 60th Street and 6140 S. Rhodes Avenue.
The Hansberrys moved into the house on Rhodes Avenue in May 1937. The family was threatened by a white mob, which threw a brick through a window, narrowly missing Lorraine. The Supreme Court of Illinois upheld the legality of the restrictive covenant and forced the family to leave the house.
The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision on a legal technicality (Hansberry v. Lee, decided 12 November 1940). The result was the opening of 30 blocks of South Side Chicago to African Americans. Although the case did not argue that racially restrictive covenants were unlawful, it marked the beginning of their end.
Lorraine graduated from Englewood High School in Chicago, where she first became interested in theater. She enrolled in the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she immediately became politically active with the Communist Party USA and Progressive Party presidential campaign of Henry A. Wallace (1888-1965) in 1948. She left before completing her degree and went to Chicago and Guadalajara, Mexico, to study painting.
Hansberry moved to New York in 1950 to begin her career as a writer, attending The New School for Social Research (now simply The New School). She moved to Harlem and wrote for Paul Robeson’s Freedom, a progressive publication, which put her in contact with other literary and political mentors such as DuBois and Freedom editor Louis Burnham (1915-60).
She continued her political activism, working not only on the U.S. civil rights movement, but also on the global struggle against colonialism and imperialism. During a protest against racial discrimination at New York University, she met Robert B. Nemiroff (1929-91), a Jewish writer who shared her political views. They married on 20 June 1953 at the Hansberrys’ home in Chicago.
Like many black civil rights activists, Hansberry saw that the struggle against white supremacy was linked to the program of the Communist Party. A closeted lesbian, she explained many global struggles in terms of women’s involvement.
Besides writing news articles and editorials, she wrote scripts at Freedom. To celebrate the newspaper’s first birthday in 1951, Hansberry wrote the script for a rally and in February 1952, with the produced playwright Alice Childress (1916-94; Florence [1949, produced September 1950]; Just a Little Simple [September 1950-February 1951]), collaborated on a pageant for its Negro History Festival.
In 1956, her husband and Burt D’Lugoff wrote the hit song, “Cindy, Oh Cindy.” Its profits allowed Hansberry to quit working and devote herself to writing. She then began a play she called The Crystal Stair, from Langston Hughes’ poem “Mother to Son.” She later retitled it A Raisin in the Sun from Hughes’ poem, “Harlem: A Dream Deferred.”
In A Raisin in the Sun, the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway, she drew upon the lives of the working-class black people who rented from her father and who went to school with her on Chicago’s South Side.
She also used members of her family as inspiration for her characters. Hansberry noted similarities between Nannie Hansberry and Mama Younger and between Carl Hansberry and Big Walter. Walter Lee, Jr. and Ruth are composites of Hansberry’s brothers, their wives and her sister, Mamie. In an interview, Hansberry laughingly said “Beneatha is me, eight years ago.”
After a try-out tour to New Haven, Connecticut (opening on 19 January 1959 at the Shubert Theatre), Philadelphia (Walnut Street Theatre, 26 January), and Chicago (Blackstone Theatre, 10 February), all to positive reviews, the play premiered on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on 11 March 1959. It transferred to the Belasco Theatre on 19 October 1959 and closed on 25 June 1960 after 530 total performances.
 |
Program for the Blackstone Theatre run of A Raisin in the Sun
from its final pre-New York stop in Chicago in February 1959 before
transferring to Broadway in March.
A Raisin in the Sun (Columbia Pictures, 1961, directed by Daniel Petrie) was filmed in Chicago in 1960 with largely he same cast as the Broadway mounting, It was taped for an ABC television broadcast in November 2008, directed by Kenny Leon and starring Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs as Walter Lee, Audra McDonald as Ruth, and Phylicia Rashad as Lena. The broadcast was nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe.
The play was revived twice on Broadway, in 2004 (with the cast
and director of the TV version) and 2014 (with Denzel Washington, directed
again by Leon), winning Tonys for both Best Revival of a Play and Best
Direction of a Play.
In October 1973, the play opened at the 46th Street Theatre as the musical Raisin (with a book by her former husband and Charlotte Zaltzberg; music by Judd Woldin; lyrics by Robert Brittan); directed and choreographed by Donald McKayle, it won the Best Musical Tony and the Best Actress in a Musical for Virginia Capers as Lena Younger. It ran 847 performances, closing at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in December 1975.
Two recent plays, together with Hansberry’s original, are often referred to as “The Raisin Cycle.” The 2010 Bruce Norris play Clybourne Park (première: February 2010, Playwrights Horizons in New York; Broadway: April 2012; Tony for Best Play), opening just before the events of A Raisin in the Sun, depicts the white family that sold the house to the Youngers. Beneatha's Place (premièred at Baltimore’s Center Stage), a 2013 play by Kwame Kwei-Armah, follows Beneatha after she leaves with Asagai for Nigeria and, instead of becoming a doctor, becomes the Dean of Social Sciences at a California university.
The première production of A Raisin in the Sun was directed by Lloyd Richards (1919-2006), later associated with the works of August Wilson, who was the first Black director to stage a play on Broadway. Richards was nominated for a Tony for Broadway’s Raisin for Best Direction of a Play, which had played at the Shubert in New Haven for four performances in January 1959 while on its short pre-Broadway tour; the director would later (1979-91) return to New Haven as dean of the Yale School of Drama and artistic director of the prestigious Yale Repertory Theatre.
Hansberry was diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas in 1963. She had surgery on 24 June and 2 August, but neither operation was successful in removing the cancer.
Her second play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, about a Jewish intellectual, opened on Broadway on 15 October 1964 and ran for 101 performances, receiving mixed reviews. Her friends and supporters rallied to keep the play running.
On Tuesday, 12 January 1965, Hansberry died of pancreatic cancer at 34. Sidney Brustein had given its last performance on Sunday, 10 January and was dark on Monday as is the theater custom.
The production didn’t give a performance on the 12th, in respect for the author’s passing, but the play’s immediate future was left in doubt until Thursday, 14 January, when the producers, Nemiroff and D’Lugoff, announced that it would not reopen.
(Some sources record that Sidney Brustein closed on 12 January, the day Hansberry died, but it was officially still open that night. It was also still officially open on the following two nights, as the closing notice wasn’t issued until the 14th. The Broadway website Internet Broadway Database [IBDB] designates 10 January, the date of the show’s last performance, as the closing date.)
Although Hansberry and Nemiroff divorced in 1962, before her death, he remained dedicated to her work. As literary executor, he edited and published her three unfinished plays (The Collected Last Plays; New American Library, 1983): Les Blancs (Broadway, 15 November-19 December 1970 for 40 performances), The Drinking Gourd, and What Use Are Flowers?
He also collected Hansberry’s unpublished writings, speeches and journal entries and presented them in the autobiographical montage To Be Young, Gifted and Black (Cherry Lane Theatre [Off-Broadway]; 2 January-7 December 1969 for 380 performances). The title is taken from a speech given by Hansberry in May 1964 to winners of a United Negro Fund writing competition: “. . . though it be thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic, to be young, gifted and black!”
In August 1969, Nina Simone introduced a song entitled “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” (lyrics by Weldon Irvine), released as a recording in 1970, named in memory of the singer’s friend, who was the godmother to Simone’s daughter. The song would become an anthem of the American Civil Rights Movement.
In 2013, Lorraine Hansberry was inducted into the American
Theatre Hall of Fame (see my post on Rick On Theater on 10 February 2020)
and in 2017, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
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