Who are the people in your neighborhood? In 1959, a white family moves out. In 2009, a white family moves in. In the intervening years, change overtakes a neighborhood, along with attitudes, inhabitants, and property values. Loosely inspired by Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, Bruce Norris' pitch-black comedy takes on the specter of gentrification in our communities, leaving no stone unturned in the process.
What Is the Story of Clybourne Park?
At the heart of this Pulitzer Prize-winning play is a house. In act one, the house is being sold in 1959. Following a family tragedy, a white couple is selling their home in a suburban Chicago neighborhood, and their neighbors was dismayed to learn that the buyers are African-American. In act two the same house is again being sold. But now, in 2009, a white couple is purchasing the home from an African-American couple, and they butt heads over showing respect for a neighborhood that has become largely African-American. These two racially charged transactions tell the story of a home and a neighborhood, as well as the sense of history and entitlement people hang on to, even in the ever-shifting physical boundaries of the American cultural landscape.
