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PRODUCTION HISTORY

The play was first produced at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York City, on March 11, 1959 under the direction of Lloyd Richards and has, subsequently, been one of the most produced plays of all time, winning the Outer Critics Award for 1959 for Best Off-Broadway Play.

CHARACTERS

Ruth Younger -- Ruby Dee

Travis Younger -- Glynn Turman

Walter Lee Younger (Brother) -- Sidney Poitier

Beneatha Younger -- Diana Sands

Lena Younger (Mama) -- Claudia McNeil

Joseph Asagai -- Ivan Dixon

George Murchison -- Louis Gossett

Karl Linder -- John Fiedler

Bobo -- Lonne Elder

Moving Men -- Ed Hall, Douglas Turner

SETTING

The action of the play is set in Chicago's Southside, sometime between World War II and the present.

The Younger living room would be a comfortaable and well-ordered room if it were not for a number of indestructible contradictions to this state of being. Its furnishings are typical and undistinguished and their primary feature now is that they hav clearly had to accomodate the living of too many people for too many years -- and they are tired. Still, we can see that at some time, a time probably no longer remembered by the family (except perhaps for Mama) the furnishings of this room were actually selected with care and love and even hope -- and brought to this apartment and arranged with taste and pride.

That was a long time ago. Now the once loved pattern of the couch upholstery has to fight to show itself from under acres of crocheted doilies and couch covers which have themselves finally come to be more important than the upholstery. And here a table or a chair has been moved to disguise the worn places in the carpet; but the carpet has fought back by showing its weariness, with depressing uniformity, elsewhere on its surface.

Weariness has, in fact, won in this room. Everything has been polished, washed, sat on, used, scrubbed too often. All pretenses but living itself have long since vanished from the very atmosphere of this room.

Moreover, a section of this room, for it is not really a room unto itself, though the landlord's lease would make it seem so, slopes backward to provide a small kitchen area, wher the family prepares the meals that are eaten in the living room proper, which must also serve as dining room. The single window that has been provided for these "two" rooms is located in this kitchen area. The sole natural light the family may enjoy in the course of a day is only that which fights its way thorugh this little window.

At left, a door leads to a bedroom which is shared by Mama and her daughter, Beneatha. At right, opposite, is a second room (which in the beginning o the life of this apartment was probably a breakfast room) which serves as a bedroom for Walter and his wife, Ruth.

PLAY STRUCTURE

ACT I

Scene 1: Friday morning.

Scene 2: The following morning.

ACT II

Scene 1: Later, the same day.

Scene 2: Friday night, a few weeks later.

Scene 3: Moving day, one week later.

ACT III

An hour later.

PRODUCTION NOTES

This was taken from Hansberry's book To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. It is her response to a statement that the play was not necessarily about black people.

HANSBERRY: ...I have told people that not only is this a Negro family, specifically and definitely culturally, but it's not even a New York family or a southern Negro family. It is specifically Southside Chicago... So I would say it is definitely a Negro play before it is anything else....

EXCERPT FROM THE PLAY

This conversation between Walter and Ruth takes place in Act I, scene i just after their son, Travis, has left for school.

WALTER (Looking up at her): See -- I'm trying to talk to you 'bout myself -- (Shaking his head with the repetition) -- and all you can say is eat them eggs and go to work.

RUTH (Wearily): Honey, you never say nothing new. I listen to you every day, every night and every morning, and you never say nothing new. (Shrugging) So you would rather be Mr. Arnold than be his chauffeur. So -- I would rather be living in Buckingham Palace.

WALTER: That is just what is wrong with the colored women in this world... Don't understand nothing about building their men up and and making 'em feel like they somebody. Like they can do something.

RUTH (Drily, but to hurt): There are colored men who do things.

WALTER: No thanks to the colored woman.

RUTH: Well, being a colored woman, I guess I can't help myself none.

(She rises and gets the ironing board and sets it up and attacks a huge pile of rough-dried clothes, sprinkling them in preparation for the ironing and then rolling into tight fat balls)

WALTER (Mumbling): We one group of men tied to a race of women with small minds.

Iowa State University maintains a database with the complete dialogue in full concordance format for A Raisin in the Sun.

NPR: A Raisin in the Sun, Present at the Creation: an NPR report from March 11, 1959 with a film excerpt from an interview with Lorraine Hansberry.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

New American Library, 1961.

Modern Library, 1995

Vintage Books, 1994

Random House of Canada, 1995

also in the following anthologies:

Black Theater. Lindsay Patterson (Ed.). Dodd, Mead and Co., 1971.

Contemporary Black Drama. C.F. Oliver and S. Sills, (Eds.). Charles Scribner's Sons.