canmark
Active Member
Clybourne Park is a good play for UTers, I should think.
Bruce Norris' Pulitzer Prize-winning play looks at issues of "race, class, property ownership and community... (in a) satirical look at demographics, history, home and heart" (so says Studio 180's description of the play).
The first act takes place at the same time as A Raisin in the Sun, but from the perspective of the white Chicago neighborhood that the black family in Raisin is about to move into. There is fear of the "other," of declining property values, of strange cooking smells, of a changing neighborhood... fears we could think of happening in Toronto today.
The second act takes place many years later when the neighborhood is predominantly black. Now, a white couple (with a baby on the way) wants to move into this desirable neighborhood (with close proximity to downtown) and replace the existing house with a much larger one. Now it's the black residents who are objecting to these changes and gentrification of what has become their neighborhood. Again, we can easily imagine these issues in a Toronto context.
While the play starts slow, it builds and becomes quite outrageously funny in the second act.
Studio 180 produced an excellent version of The Normal Heart last year, and they've followed up nicely with Clybourne Park this spring. And note, the play is almost simultaneously opening on Broadway, following success off-Broadway and in the West End.
http://www.studio180theatre.com/productions/clybourne-park
http://clybournepark.com/
Bruce Norris' Pulitzer Prize-winning play looks at issues of "race, class, property ownership and community... (in a) satirical look at demographics, history, home and heart" (so says Studio 180's description of the play).
The first act takes place at the same time as A Raisin in the Sun, but from the perspective of the white Chicago neighborhood that the black family in Raisin is about to move into. There is fear of the "other," of declining property values, of strange cooking smells, of a changing neighborhood... fears we could think of happening in Toronto today.
The second act takes place many years later when the neighborhood is predominantly black. Now, a white couple (with a baby on the way) wants to move into this desirable neighborhood (with close proximity to downtown) and replace the existing house with a much larger one. Now it's the black residents who are objecting to these changes and gentrification of what has become their neighborhood. Again, we can easily imagine these issues in a Toronto context.
While the play starts slow, it builds and becomes quite outrageously funny in the second act.
Studio 180 produced an excellent version of The Normal Heart last year, and they've followed up nicely with Clybourne Park this spring. And note, the play is almost simultaneously opening on Broadway, following success off-Broadway and in the West End.
http://www.studio180theatre.com/productions/clybourne-park
http://clybournepark.com/
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I was blown away with how the set changed in the cave -- having spent lots of hours backstage in little theatre productions, I would love to get a look at how they made that happen.