Lorraine Hansberry

Writing

Biography

Lorraine Hansberry was born May 19, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois. Her family challenged legal segregation, giving rise to the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. This might have inspired Hansberry to accomplish a first: The opening of A Raisin in the Sun on Broadway on March 11, 1959, which was adapted to screenplay form for two feature films. No black female author had done the former before. The play's storyline about the Youngers, a black family trying out an integrationist vision of life in spite of societal racism, resonates with Hansberry's father's legal battle from a decade earlier. Although Hansberry had many writings published and wrote other plays, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window was her only other play that got a production during her life. In 1963, Hansberry received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, leading to her untimely death at the age of 34.

Filmography Movies

Acting

MOVIE

Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement

9.0(0.0K)

This documentary explores the growth and development of black theatre from its earliest roots, also examining its close ties with the civil rights movement. Included are interviews with veterans of the theatrical world such as James Earl Jones and Ed Bullins.

Play Trailer

Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement

Self (Archive Footage)

MOVIE

Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes / Feeling Heart

6.2(0.0K)

On March 11, 1959, Lorraine Hansberry’s 'A Raisin in the Sun' opened on Broadway and changed the face of American theater forever. As the first-ever black woman to author a play performed on Broadway, she did not shy away from richly drawn characters and unprecedented subject matter. The play attracted record crowds and earned the coveted top prize from the New York Drama Critics’ Circle. While the play is seen as a groundbreaking work of art, the timely story of Hansberry’s life is far less known.

Play Trailer

Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes / Feeling Heart

Self (archive footage)

Production

MOVIE

A Raisin in the Sun

7.7(0.1K)

Walter Lee Younger is a young man struggling with his station in life. Sharing a tiny apartment with his wife, son, sister and mother, he seems like an imprisoned man. Until, that is, the family gets an unexpected financial windfall.

A Raisin in the Sun

A Raisin in the Sun

6.1(0.0K)

Dreams can make a life worth living, but they can also be dashed by bad decisions. This is the crossroads whare the Younger family find themselves when their father passes away and leaves them with $10,000 in life insurance money. Should they buy a new home for the family? Perhaps a liquor store? While no choice is easy, life on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s is even harder.

National Theatre Live: Les Blancs

6.0(0.0K)

An African country teeters on the edge of civil war. A society prepares to drive out its colonial present and claim an independent future. Racial tensions boil over. Tshembe, returned home from England for his father’s funeral, finds himself in the eye of the storm.

Play Trailer

National Theatre Live: Les Blancs

Writer

MOVIE

To Be Young, Gifted and Black: The World of Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words

Not rated yet

Excerpts from the 1969 Off-Broadway production at the Cherry Lane Theater of To Be Young, Gifted and Black: The World of Lorraine Hansberry, adapted by Robert Nemiroff, Hansberry's widower, and directed by Gene Frankel.

Play Trailer

To Be Young, Gifted and Black: The World of Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words

Writer