Clybourne Park

Center Theatre Group: Mark Taper Forum
( 01/11/2012 - 02/26/2012 )

In the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and Olivier Award-winning “Clybourne Park,” Bruce Norris imagines the history of one of the more important houses in literary history, both before and after it becomes a focal point in Lorraine Hansberry’s classic “A Raisin in the Sun.” In 1959, the house, which is located in a white neighborhood at 406 Clybourne St. in Chicago, is sold to an African-American family (the Younger family in “Raisin in the Sun”). Then in 2009 after the neighborhood changed into an African-American community, the house is sold to a white couple. It is through this prism of property ownership that Norris’ lacerating sense of humor dissects race relations and middle class hypocrisies in America.