When searching for information that is useful to my entries, I usually scour news stories, podcasts, court documents, and policy briefs. I can safely say that I have never before turned to a playbill for inspiration but, as this blog could use a dash of culture, I see fit to highlight one of the finest depictions of gentrification, housing, and identity on stage- Bruce Norris's Pulitzer and Tony award-winning Clybourne Park. Norris's script picks up where Lorraine Hansberry's classic A Raisin in the Sun left off, with the African-American Younger family about to move to the all-white middle class Chicago neighborhood from which the play takes its name. However, the Act One's narrative continues from the perspective of the white neighbors whose racial animus and fears of block-busting are revealed when they petition the couple selling the home to reconsider their decision. The play's second act captures 21st century Clybourne Park, now a predominately black neighborhood that is experiencing gentrification personified by a white couple seeking to buy and tear down a house on the block. The white couple's efforts to receive approval of their plans from black neighbors who serve on the neighborhood association quickly spiral into a bitter argument about race, class, and the pivotal role that one's home, neighborhood, and neighbors often play in forming a sense of identity. During Act Two's argument, decades of resentment and misunderstanding on behalf of both parties exposes Walter Younger's (of A Raisin in the Sun) dream as, in the words of Langston Hughes, just sagging like a heavy load, about to explode even more than a half century after A Raisin in the Sun's debut. Arguments over racially restrictive covenants and institutionalized redlining may seem to be relics of the past, but the same themes are central to the contentious debate surrounding gentrification, redevelopment, and affordable housing policy as communities struggle to articulate their identities in times of flux. I highly recommend the play and, fellow Bostonians, try to catch it while the Speak Easy Stage Company puts in on at the Boston Center for the Arts's Stanford Calderwood Pavilion in the South End (extended through April 6)!
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| Photo Credit: Craig Schwartz |
For diehard housing law and policy wonks (I know you're out there!), the play should present a fresh and true snapshot of gentrification's pitfalls and opportunities for progressive, frank race and class-based dialogue. It's easy to imagine the (unseen and fictitious) policymakers of Clybourne Park's Chicago wrestling with the same issues as the homeowners in drafting policies and forming partnerships to address affordable housing, education, and infrastructure concerns amidst a gentrifying landscape. This should come as no surprise as A Raisin in the Sun was written with a keen awareness of the realities surrounding housing policy in the 1940s and 1950s. Lorraine Hansberry was partially inspired by the struggles of her own parents and other prospective African-American homeowners who attempted to purchase property in Chicago's all-white Washington Park. The Hansberrys' struggle to invalidate that neighborhood's racially restrictive covenant led to a Supreme Court decision allowing the covenant to be challenged again in court. See Hasnberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32 (1940). The case, now taught to many law students for its procedural issues, and the subsequent Shelley decision (SCOTUS holding that courts could not enforce racially restrictive covenants because that would involve discriminatory state action violative of the Fourteenth Amendment) were landmark steps toward the passing of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. See Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948). Through its depiction of people who could very easily be the gentrifiers or long-time residents on our blocks, Clybourne Park demonstrates that the long, difficult struggle for fair housing and the difficult questions posed by demographic shifts and gentrification are as real today as they were in 1959.
Note: For those of you in Boston lucky enough to snag tickets, the Huntington Theatre Company is putting on A Raisin in the Sun through April 7.
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