The concept of a response video is something our generation is well versed in understanding and engaging.
But the concept of a play being created in response to a well-known American play is a rare feat.
And in the case of Grand Rapids Civic Theatre's debut of Clybourne Park, the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play by Bruce Norris, the timing of its arrival, considering the timing of the play's setting, is, well, right on time.
Clybourne Park, originating from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, responds to Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun (1959) as it imagines a fictional set of events set right before and after the Hansberry play, with 50 years in between this two-act production.
Act One begins in 1959 with a white couple from an all-white neighborhood considering selling their home to a black couple. Given the time period, you can imagine the stress this brings on their community as the best and worst of human nature is revealed.
When we finally land at Act Two, set in the present day of 2009, the neighborhood, now predominately black, is facing issues of gentrification as a white couple is seeking to purchase the home seen in Act One. The white buyers now run up against a host of characters who are trying to keep them from changing the character of their neighborhood. It is a complex and engaging work of art.
"This is a play that says many things we never do, but are thinking all the time," says director Bruce Tinker. "From coarse to poetic, the language asks the very essence of modern life—why do we continue to talk at and not listen to each other?"
As this play finally becomes available to community theatres around our country, many regional theatres are using Clybourne Park (as well as restaging A Raisin in the Sun) as an educational opportunity to engage in critical dialogue around this important and complex topic with their community members. GRCT will be hosting a related event with the Grand Rapids Public Library (see below).
Admission: $16 - $28
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