Clybourne Park

(This is Jordan's post.)

Clybourne Park was written by Bruce Norris.  It premiered off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons on February 21, 2010, where it was directed by Pam MacKinnon.  It premiered on the West End at the Royal Court Theatre in August 2010 (with Martin Freeman as Karl and Steve).  Finally, it premiered on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre on April 19, 2012.  The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play, and the Theatre World Award, and it was nominated for many others.

Bruce Norris graduated from Northwestern University in 1982.  As an actor, he performed on Broadway in Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter and Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues.  As a playwright, almost all of his plays have been produced at the Steppenwolf Theatre, where Norris has also acted.  Some of his other plays include The Actor Retires (his first play), Purple Heart, and The Low Road, which just premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in March.

Clybourne Park is an unofficial sequel to the 1959 Lorraine Hansberry play A Raisin in the Sun, which was about black Younger family attempting to move into the all-white neighborhood Clybourne Park.  The first act of Clybourne Park takes place during the events of A Raisin in the Sun, but from the perspective of the white family who is selling their house.  The characters are Russ and Bev, who are attempting to sell their house while grieving over the death of their son, Francine and Albert, Russ and Bev’s black housekeeper and her black husband, Jim, the clergyman, and Karl and Betsy, the neighbor and his deaf wife.   Karl is the exact same character as the minor white character in A Raisin in the Sun, Karl Lindner, who attempts to convince the black Younger family into not buying the house; in Clybourne Park, the same character tries to convince Russ and Bev into backing out of the deal.   In the second act, all of the actors change characters, as the events of the play take place in the same house in 2009.  Over those fifty years, Clybourne Park has become an all-black neighborhood, the black characters represent a neighborhood organization, and the white couple is seeking to buy the house.  After lengthy discussions of housing codes, the conversation eventually turns to racism, to which both parties respond poorly.  At the very end of the play, a nearby worker finds an old trunk with some of Russ and Bev’s stuff, including their son’s suicide note.  We are transported back to 1959, and Bev catches her son, Kenneth, late at night. One of the very last lines of the play is “I really believe things are about to change for the better. I firmly believe that.”

1) The structure of this play is quite odd—it’s essentially the same very long scene twice, with no rising action between the acts.  What is the effect of the structure of this play? Why is the 1959 coda necessary at the very end?

2) Perhaps the most interesting character choice in Act 1 is Betsy.  Where does her deafness fit in with the grand scheme of this play? Is it played for laughs? Isn’t that bad?

3) Long periods of this play are comprised of dialogue about seemingly irrelevant subjects, such as the capitals of foreign countries and housing codes.  What do you think of this?  Is there an underlying point here?  Is it a reference to the mundaneness of institutional racism?

4) This play exists in a sort of highly specific modern genre of “civil conversation turned uncivil” in the same vein as Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage or Lisa D’Amour’s Detroit.  What does it say about our current society and the state of our theatre that this has become such a common theme in well-received modern plays?  Does it suggest a growing distrust of the politically-correct?

5) How do you feel about Swine Palace producing this play in the fall? It is being directed by Femi Euba, so, of course, it will be a successful production, but what exactly is there to be gained from this play in Baton Rouge? Will audiences enjoy it? Clybourne Park was written by Bruce Norris.  It premiered off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons on February 21, 2010, where it was directed by Pam MacKinnon.  It premiered on the West End at the Royal Court Theatre in August 2010 (with Martin Freeman as Karl and Steve).  Finally, it premiered on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre on April 19, 2012.  The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play, and the Theatre World Award, and it was nominated for many others.

Bruce Norris graduated from Northwestern University in 1982.  As an actor, he performed on Broadway in Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter and Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues.  As a playwright, almost all of his plays have been produced at the Steppenwolf Theatre, where Norris has also acted.  Some of his other plays include The Actor Retires (his first play), Purple Heart, and The Low Road, which just premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in March.

Clybourne Park is an unofficial sequel to the 1959 Lorraine Hansberry play A Raisin in the Sun, which was about black Younger family attempting to move into the all-white neighborhood Clybourne Park.  The first act of Clybourne Park takes place during the events of A Raisin in the Sun, but from the perspective of the white family who is selling their house.  The characters are Russ and Bev, who are attempting to sell their house while grieving over the death of their son, Francine and Albert, Russ and Bev’s black housekeeper and her black husband, Jim, the clergyman, and Karl and Betsy, the neighbor and his deaf wife.   Karl is the exact same character as the minor white character in A Raisin in the Sun, Karl Lindner, who attempts to convince the black Younger family into not buying the house; in Clybourne Park, the same character tries to convince Russ and Bev into backing out of the deal.   In the second act, all of the actors change characters, as the events of the play take place in the same house in 2009.  Over those fifty years, Clybourne Park has become an all-black neighborhood, the black characters represent a neighborhood organization, and the white couple is seeking to buy the house.  After lengthy discussions of housing codes, the conversation eventually turns to racism, to which both parties respond poorly.  At the very end of the play, a nearby worker finds an old trunk with some of Russ and Bev’s stuff, including their son’s suicide note.  We are transported back to 1959, and Bev catches her son, Kenneth, late at night. One of the very last lines of the play is “I really believe things are about to change for the better. I firmly believe that.”

1) The structure of this play is quite odd—it’s essentially the same very long scene twice, with no rising action between the acts.  What is the effect of the structure of this play? Why is the 1959 coda necessary at the very end?

2) Perhaps the most interesting character choice in Act 1 is Betsy.  Where does her deafness fit in with the grand scheme of this play? Is it played for laughs? Isn’t that bad?

3) Long periods of this play are comprised of dialogue about seemingly irrelevant subjects, such as the capitals of foreign countries and housing codes.  What do you think of this?  Is there an underlying point here?  Is it a reference to the mundaneness of institutional racism?

4) This play exists in a sort of highly specific modern genre of “civil conversation turned uncivil” in the same vein as Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage or Lisa D’Amour’s Detroit.  What does it say about our current society and the state of our theatre that this has become such a common theme in well-received modern plays?  Does it suggest a growing distrust of the politically-correct?

5) How do you feel about Swine Palace producing this play in the fall? It is being directed by Femi Euba, so, of course, it will be a successful production, but what exactly is there to be gained from this play in Baton Rouge? Will audiences enjoy it?  

(This is Jordan's post.)