Saturday, November 7, 2020

Play #49 -- Les Blancs, National Theatre at Home, July 8

 A poignant play about Black and white, missionaries and colonizers, assimilation and revolution in an unnamed African country, Les Blancs was written by acclaimed playwright Lorraine Hansberry, the first Black woman to have a play performed on Broadway (A Raisin in the Sun).  

A tireless activist in the pan-Africanist movement as well as a playwright, Hansberry knew or worked with many prominent Black people of the mid-20th century, including Paul Robeson, W. E. B. Du Bois, and James Baldwin.  She died at age 34 of pancreatic cancer, leaving the mostly completed play behind.

For a play written in 1965, I was struck by how contemporary and American a view of colonialism it portrayed.

https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/nt-at-home-les-blancs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqScZlNlTy8


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