Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry [6]
CAST
(in order of appearance)
RUTH YOUNGER Starletta DuPois
WALTER LEE YOUNGER Danny Glover
TRAVIS YOUNGER Kimble Joyner
BENEATHA YOUNGER Kim Yancey
LENA YOUNGER Esther Rolle
JOSEPH ASAGAI Lou Ferguson
GEORGE MURCHISON Joseph C. Phillips
MRS. JOHNSON Helen Martin
KARL LINDNER John Fiedler
BOBO Stephen Henderson
MOVING MEN Ron O.J. Parson,
Charles Watts
Directed by Bill Duke
Produced by Chiz Schultz
Executive Producer Robert Nemiroff
Co-Producer Production Design
Steven S. Schwartz Thomas Cariello
Lighting Design Costume Design
Bill Klages Celia Bryant and Judy Dearing
Music Edited by
Ed Bland Gary Anderson
Camerawork
Greg Cook, Gregory Harms, Kenneth A. Patterson
(Based on the 25th Anniversary Stage Production
Directed by Harold Scott
Produced by The Roundabout Theatre Company, Inc.
[Gene Feist/Todd Haimes] and Robert Nemiroff)
Produced for American Playhouse with funds from Public Television Stations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies. American Playhouse is presented by KCET, SCETV, WGBH, and WNET; Executive Director David M. Davis, Executive Producer Lindsay Law, Director of Program Development Lynn Holst. For KCET: Executive Producer Ricki Franklin, Supervising Producer Samuel J. Paul, Executive in Charge Phylis Geller; with additional funds from the Ambassador International Foundation. For WNET: Executive Producer David Loxton.
A RAISIN IN THE SUN was first presented by Philip Rose and David J. Cogan at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York City, March 11, 1959, with the following cast:
(In order of appearance)
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 LINDNER John Fiedler
BOBO Lonne Elder III
MOVING MEN Ed Hall,
Douglas Turner Ward
Directed by Lloyd Richards
Designed and Lighted by Ralph Alswang
Costumes by Virginia Volland
The action of the play is set
in Chicago’s Southside, sometime between
World War II and the present.
Act I
Scene One: Friday morning.
Scene Two: The following morning.
Act II
Scene One: Later, the same day.
Scene Two: Friday night, a few weeks later.
Scene Three: Moving day, one week later.
Act III
An hour later.
ACT I
SCENE ONE
The YOUNGER living room would be a comfortable 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 have clearly had to accommodate 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