A RAISIN IN THE SUN

The Shubert Organization
Ethel Barrymore Theatre and Belasco Theatre
New York City, NY
Opening-March 11, 1959
Closing-June 25, 1960

Directed: Lloyd Richards
Designed: Ralph Alswang
Costumes: Virginia Volland
Lighted: Ralph Alswang
Sound Design: Masque Sound Engineering Company

Cast:
Sidney Poitier – Walter Lee Younger (Brother)
Ruby Dee – Ruth Younger
Glynn Turman – Travis Younger
Diana Sands – Beneatha Younger
Claudia McNeil – Lena Younger (Mother)
Ivan Dixon – Joseph Asagai
Louis Gossett – George Murchison
John Fiedler – Karl Lindner
Lonne Elder III – Bobo
Douglas Turner Ward, Ed Hall – Moving Men

A Raisin in the Sun gained huge success despite it being produced by Philip Rose, a man that had never produced a play before and has very little interest from large investors early on. The production was first played in New Haven, Philadelphia, and Chicago, before eventually opening at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on March 11, 1959, in New York City. It ran there for 530 performances and made Lorraine Hansberry the first African American woman to write a play that was produced on Broadway. A Raisin in the Sun, also made Lloyd Richards, an actor and the dean of the Yale School of Drama from 1979 to 1991, the first African American to direct a play on Broadway since 1907.

The Broadway show, as well as the film adaptation made in 1961 of A Raisin in the Sun, included prominent Black actors and moguls such as Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Claudia McNeil, Diana Sands, and Glynn Turman.

 

{ VIDEO] Sidney Poitier, Lloyd Richard, and Ruby Dee reflect on The Groundbreaking Broadway Casting of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun 

Sidney Poitier is most known for being the first Black person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Lillies in a Field in 1963.

Ruby Dee is a critically acclaimed African American actor and was a civil rights activist during the Civil Rights Movement. The New York Drama Critics’ Circle named A Raisin in the Sun the best play of 1959. In 1960, A Raisin in the Sun was nominated for 4 Tony Awards, which recognize achievement in live Broadway theatre.

Lorraine Hansberry Documentary Project co-director /producer Tracy Heather Strain interviewed Ruby Dee in February 2009.

The nominations were as follows:

 

A Raisin in the Sun for Best Play

Synopsis

“Lorraine Hansberry’s landmark drama was one of the first on Broadway to examine African-American life on the cusp of the civil rights era. Walter Younger and his mother, Lena, both yearn to move their family out of Chicago’s Southside ghetto. When Lena’s late husband’s insurance check arrives, Lena hopes to use it to buy a house in a white neighborhood — while Walter hopes to invest it in the liquor business.”

Sidney Poitier for Best Actor in a Play

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Poitier

 

 

Claudia McNeil for Best Actress in a Play

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_McNeil

 

Lloyd Richards

June 29th, 2024

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Lloyd Richards for Best Direction of a Play

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Richards

Lloyd George Richards was a Canadian-American theatre director, actor, and dean of the Yale School of Drama from 1979 to 1991, and Yale University professor emeritus.

“Among Richards’ accomplishments are staging the original production of Lorraine Hansberry‘s A Raisin in the Sun, debuting on Broadway to standing ovations on 11 March 1959, and in 1984 he introduced August Wilson to Broadway in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. As head of the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, he helped develop the careers of Wendy Wasserstein, Christopher Durang, Lee Blessing, and David Henry Hwang. Richards died of heart failure on his eighty-seventh birthday in New York City. Mr. Richards also taught Moscow Art Theatre acting technique under Paul Mann at the Actor’s Workshop in New York alongside Morris Carnovsky.”

The 1961 film adaptation also received several awards: The National Board of Review recognized Ruby Dee with the Best Supporting Actress Award for her role in the film version of A Raisin in the Sun.   

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Robert Hooks

MORE BLACK THEATRE HISTORY!..More Black Theatre Pioneers
While studying drama and theatre at the Bessie V. Hicks School of Drama in Philadelphia, (circa 1958,) I first met Lloyd Richards when he came to Philly and was directing the only all-Black professional play I had ever seen “A Raisin in the Sun”, which was on its way to open on Broadway. I was there that opening night at the Walnut Street Theatre to witness this amazing and brilliant Lorraine Hansberry play, the first play ever presented in America by a Black woman playwright. It was a mind-blowing experience for this young wannabee theatre artist and was the sole reason I simply had to move to New York to pursue my acting career. It’s a long story (which of course is covered in my memoir) but I’ll shorten the amazing tale for this MBTH series. When I got to New York three months later, my very first professional acting assignment was replacing the late great artist Louis Gossett Jr., in that same play that prompted me to move to Gotham A Raisin in the Sun. Louis was leaving the show to go to Hollywood to do the Raisin movie. Lloyd Richards cast me in Raisin, and from that point on we became great friends and theatre colleagues. When Douglas, Jerry Krone, and I created the Negro Ensemble Company in 1967, Lloyd loved our concept and mission and insisted on being involved, and immediately joined NEC’s Training Program Faculty where he taught our young students, as well as NEC’s professional ensemble artists while they prepared for their new season. He fell in love with the youngsters and the seasoned artists and his acting workshops were always full to standing room. Eventually, NYU and Yale came a calling, and Lloyd went on to head those Drama Schools (where he discovered the great playwright, August Wilson,) but he graced the new NEC institution with his teaching brilliance FIRST! …Lloyd Richards, is a great and truly original Black theatre pioneer.

 

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Ruby Dee

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Dee

Sidney Poitier and Claudia McNeil were nominated for Golden Globe Awards for their roles in the film.

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Diana Sands

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Sands

 

.John Fiedler

John Fiedler has played character roles in celebrated dramas on Broadway and in Hollywood but gained lasting fame among young audiences as the voice of Piglet in Walt Disney’s Winnie-the-Pooh films.

Mr. Fiedler had appeared in the Broadway and film productions of “A Raisin in the Sun” and had played a juror on film in the drama “Twelve Angry Men.”

 

 

Louis Gossett Jr.

Glynn Turman

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♫•*♪.¸♪♫•*OPENING NIGHT!♪♫•.*•♪

A Raisin in the Sun opening night at Sardi’s

Reviews
But she has not tipped her play to prove one thing or another. The play is honest. She has told the inner as well as the outer truth about a Negro family in the south-side of Chicago at the present time. Since the performance is also honest and since Sidney Poitier is a candid actor, A Raisin in the Sun has vigor as well as veracity and is likely to destroy the complacency of anyone who sees it.

What the situations do not matter at the moment. For A Raisin in the Sun is a play about human beings who want, on the one hand, to preserve their family pride and, on the other hand, to break out of the poverty that seems to be their fate. Not having any axe to grind, Miss Hansberry has a wide range of topics to write about some of them hilarious, some of them painful in the extreme.

You might, in fact, regard A Raisin in the Sun as a Negro The Cherry Orchard. Although the social scale of the characters is different, the knowledge of how a character is controlled by the environment is much the same, and the alternation of humor and pathos is similar.
http://theater.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?id=1077011428967&html_title=&tols_title=&byline=&fid=NONE 

 

A Raisin in the Sun
The Philadelphia Guild 

David Downing – Rosaana Carter – S Epatha Merkinson – Charlayne Woodard