A Raisin in the Sun

Due to limited capacity this year purchasing your tickets in advance online is highly recommended! 

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Our Box Office operating hours are Tuesday - Fridays from 10am-4pm.

Online ordering for shows at the Downtown Theatre will end three (3) hours prior to the performance. Any remaining tickets will be available for purchase at the Box Office one hour before the performance.

To contact the Box Office, please email boxoffice@chesapeakeshakespeare.com, or call 410-244-8570.

A Raisin in the Sun is approximately 2 hours and 45 minutes, including a 15-minute intermission.

Click here to view the show program

The Cast(Listed alphabetically)

Zach Brewster-Geisz - Karl Lindner
Tamieka Chavis**+ - Lena Younger (Mama)
Lloyd Ekpe - Joseph Asagai
Dominic Gladden - Bobo / Moving Man
Alex Jones - Travis Younger
Dawn Thomas Reidy - Ruth Younger
Gerrad Alex Taylor**+ - Walter Lee Younger
Quincy Vicks** - George Murchison / Moving Man
Niyah Worthy - Beneatha Younger

The Creative Team
Lesley Mailin** - Executive Director
Reggie Phoenix - Director
Sarah Curnoles** - Production Manager
Alexis E. Davis** - Stage Manager
Majenta Thomas - Assistant Stage Manager
Dan O'Brien** --Technical Director
Sharlene Clinton - Costume Designer
Matthew Datcher - Sound Designer
Timothy Jones - Scenic Designer
James Jackson - Lighting Designer
Jess Rassp - Props Designer
Eva Hill - Covid Safety Manager and Wardrobe Supervisor

** CSC Company Member
+ Member of Actors Equity

Lorraine Hansberry Biography

Lorraine Hansberry was born at Provident Hospital on the South Side of Chicago on May 19, 1930. She was the youngest of Nannie Perry Hansberry and Carl Augustus Hansberry’s four children. Her father founded Lake Street Bank, one of the first banks for blacks in Chicago, and ran a successful real estate business. Her uncle was William Leo Hansberry, a scholar of African studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Many prominent African American social and political leaders visited the Hansberry household during Lorraine’s childhood including sociology professor W.E.B. DuBois, poet Langston Hughes, actor and political activist Paul Robeson, musician Duke Ellington and Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens.

Despite their middle-class status, the Hansberrys were subject to segregation. When she was 8 years old, Hansberry’s family deliberately attempted to move into a restricted neighborhood. Restrictive covenants, in which white property owners agreed not to sell to blacks, created a ghetto known as the “Black Belt” on Chicago’s South Side. Carl Hansberry, with the help of Harry H. Pace, president of the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company and several white realtors, secretly bought property at 413 E. 60th Street and 6140 S. Rhodes Avenue. The Hansberrys moved into the house on Rhodes Avenue in May 1937. The family was threatened by a white mob, which threw a brick through a window, narrowly missing Lorraine. The Supreme Court of Illinois upheld the legality of the restrictive covenant and forced the family to leave the house. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision on a legal technicality. The result was the opening of 30 blocks of South Side Chicago to African Americans. Although the case did not argue that racially restrict covenants were unlawful, it marked the beginning of their end.

Lorraine graduated from Englewood High School in Chicago, where she first became interested in theater. She enrolled in the University of Wisconsin but left before completing her degree. After studying painting in Chicago and Mexico, Hansberry moved to New York in 1950 to begin her career as a writer. She wrote for Paul Robeson’s Freedom, a progressive publication, which put her in contact with other literary and political mentors such as W.E.B. DuBois and Freedom editor Louis Burnham. During a protest against racial discrimination at New York University, she met Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish writer who shared her political views. They married on June 20, 1953 at the Hansberrys’ home in Chicago.

In 1956, her husband and Burt D’Lugoff wrote the hit song, “Cindy, Oh Cindy.” Its profits allowed Hansberry to quit working and devote herself to writing. She then began a play she called The Crystal Stair, from Langston Hughes’ poem “Mother to Son.” She later retitled it A Raisin in the Sun from Hughes’ poem, “Harlem: A Dream Deferred.”

In A Raisin in the Sun, the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway, she drew upon the lives of the working-class black people who rented from her father and who went to school with her on Chicago’s South Side. She also used members of her family as inspiration for her characters. Hansberry noted similarities between Nannie Hansberry and Mama Younger and between Carl Hansberry and Big Walter. Walter Lee, Jr. and Ruth are composites of Hansberry’s brothers, their wives and her sister, Mamie. In an interview, Hansberry laughingly said “Beneatha is me, eight years ago.”

Her second play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, about a Jewish intellectual, ran on Broadway for 101 performances. It received mixed reviews. Her friends rallied to keep the play running. It closed on January 12, 1965, the day Hansberry died of cancer at 34.

Borrowed from the Chicago Public Library

Langston Hughes Birthday Celebration and Reading

Date: February 1, 2022
Time: 6pm – 7pm
Location: The Studio at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, 4th floor. 206 E Redwood St, Baltimore, MD 21202
Masks and proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test taken within the past 72 hours are required for entrance.

Come celebrate the 121st Birthday of American Poet, civil rights activist, and leader of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes.

Celebrate Hughes’ contributions to Modern Black Performance and his influence on “A Raisin In The Sun” as well as feature a reading of “Shakespeare in Harlem;” a 1959 one-act play derived from his poetry.

The reading will feature actors from CSC’s Black Classical Acting Ensemble, our Resident Acting Company, as well as other actors from our community: Mecca Nadirah Verdell, Zipporah Brown, Isaiah Mason Harvey, Elana Michelle, Tyrel Brown, Victoria Graham, Majenta Thomas, Chania Hudson, Lauren Davis, and Shaquan Pearson.

Just as William Shakespeare explores the stages of man from the infant to the old pantaloon, Hughes’ work dramatizes the black lives that race through the streets of Harlem; and surely, Lorraine Hansberry became acquainted with these types as well in creating the Younger family.

Please join us as we kick off our opening weekend with singing, cake, and remembering Harlem’s very own Shakespeare: Langston Hughes.

Note: This event will also be live streamed through our social media channels for anyone who would like to tune in virtually.

“Meet the Director” Pre-Show Event

Date: February 5, 2022
Time: 7pm
Location: The Middendorf lounge located on the first mezzanine of the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company Theatre, 7 S Calvert St, Baltimore, MD 21202
Masks and proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test taken within the past 72 hours are required for entrance.

Please join us as CSC Director of Education, Ron Heneghan, sits down with director Reggie Phoenix for a discussion on his relationship and past experiences with “A Raisin In The Sun,” his overall vision as the director, and his discoveries working on this production, and creating the world of 1950’s Southside Chicago for a 2022 Baltimore audience.

Black Women and the Black Family: A Pre-Show Discussion for “A Raisin in the Sun”

Dr. Michelle R. Scott

Dr. Tammy Henderson

Date: February 20, 2022,
Time: 1pm
Location: The Middendorf lounge located on the first mezzanine of the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company Theatre, 7 S Calvert St, Baltimore, MD 21202
Masks and proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test taken within the past 72 hours are required for entrance.

Join UMBC faculty Dr. Michelle R. Scott and Dr. Tammy Henderson as they lead a discussion surrounding the roles of gender and the Black family seen in the 50’s as well as in the play, “A Raisin In The Sun.”

Dr. Scott is a member of UMBC’s History department, as well as a published author. Currently working on a study of the origins and economic ramifications of 1920s and 30s Black vaudeville theater circuit.

Dr. Henderson is lecturer of Africana Studies with a specialty in African American women's history and public policy at UMBC. Teaching and research interests include maternity, race, Black feminist thought, Black families, and Black popular culture.

CSC's A Raisin In The Sun

Press Release

Gerrad Alex Taylor Interview with WBJC's Judith Krummeck 

Reviews

MD Theatre Guide's Review

Broadway World Review

Lorraine Hansberry in the News

The Many Visions of Lorraine Hansberry (The New York Times, January 2022)

When Lorraine Met Lloyd, and ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ Got Raised (American Theatre.org, January 2022)

CSC is following all COVID-19 regulations and guidelines issued by both state and county officials in Maryland to ensure your visit to the Downtown Theatre is a safe and pleasant one. 

To read the most up-to-date health and safety information and learn more about the venue, click here.