B'way Update: Suzan-Lori Parks, Lorraine Hansberry

Suzan-Lori Parks

Many African-American women playwrights such as Lynn Nottage, Aleasha Harris, Dominique Morriseau, Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu, and Erika Dickerson-Despina have had their work celebrated in the just-finished 2022-23 New York theater season. Two pioneering black women authors will be celebrated in many ways in 2022-23 on and Off-Broadway. Lorraine Hansberry, the first black woman to have a play produced on Broadway, will appear as a character in a play and have her landmark A Raisin in the Sun revived. Suzan-Lori Parks, the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama, will also see the play that got her that honor on stage again as well as a slew of new works.

Parks' Topdog/Underdog will be presented in a 20th anniversary production directed by Tony winner Kenny Leon at the Golden Theater with previews beginning Sept. 27 for an Oct. 20 opening. Tony nominee Corey Hawkins (In the Heights, The Tragedy of Macbeth) and Emmy winner Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Watchmen) comprise the entire cast as two brothers obsessed with history and a street card game. The play began life at the Public Theater and then transferred to Broadway with Jeffrey Wright and Mos Def in 2002.

Parks is now Writer-in-Residence at the Public and she will have two new works presented there this coming season. Plays for the Plague Year (Nov. 4-27) is the result of Parks' project to write a play every day from the start of the pandemic theater lockdown on March 13, 2020. This sweeping look at how the pandemic effected us all will be staged in the intimate Joe's Pub. Parks has also written the book for The Harder They Fall (Winter 2023), a new musical based on the 1972 film about a young singer challenging the corrupt music industry in Jamaica. The score will consists of songs from the film by Jimmy Cliff.

Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry also figures prominently in the Public's 2022-23 season. She is a character in Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge (Sept. 24-Oct. 16), a new work derived from the notorious debate between celebrated author James Baldwin and prominent conservative intellectual William F. Buckley in 1965 on the topic "Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?" The piece conceived by Greig Sargeant with Elevator Repair Service recreates the famous match-up and concludes with a scene between Baldwin and his close friend Hansberry. 

Hansberry is best known for her first big hit A Raisin in the Sun which opened in 1959 and won the New York Drama Critics Circle for Best American Play. She died tragically young at the age of 34 only a few years later. Raisin, the story of the struggling Younger family and their deferred dreams, has had two prominent Broadway revivals (2004, and 2014, both directed by Kenny Leon), a Tony-winning musical version, a film version, two TV adaptations (PBS' American Playhouse and ABC-TV adaptation derived from Leon's 2004 staging) as well as literally hundreds of regional, college, and community productions. The Public will present the latest revival of this American classic with a new staging by Tony nominee and Obie winner Robert O'Hara (Slave Play, Bootycandy) (Sept. 27-Nov. 6). Given O'Hara's track record of unconventional direction, it should be very interesting to see what he does with this beloved classic which has always been done in a fairly straightforward, kitchen-sink style.

Also on the Public's roster: Mohegan theater-maker Madelyn Sayet's solo piece Where We Belong on colonialism, Brexit and gloablization (Oct. 28-Nov. 27); Ryan J. Haddad's autobiographical Dark Disabled Stories on coping with cerebral palsey (Winter 2023); Pulitzer Prize winner James Ijames' Good Bones about the cost of gentrification (Spring 2023); and Erika Dickerson-Despina's Shadow/Land (Spring 2023) concerning a family facing ruin in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. 

James Baldwin and William F. Buckley's
1965 debate is the basis of a play set for
this fall at the Public Theater.

Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun
will be revived at the Public.

2022-23 Broadway/Off-Broadway Schedule
June 20--Chita Rivera Awards (NYU Skirball)
June 22--Coriscana (Playwrights Horizons)

June 28--Hamlet (Park Avenue Armory)
July 10--Into the Woods (St. James)

July 11--Richard III (Public Theater/Delacorte)
July 21--The Kite Runner (Hayes)
Aug. 25--Kinky Boots (Stage 42)
Summer 2022--As You Like It (Delacorte)
Sept. 19--The Piano Lesson (St. James) (previews begin; opening TBA)

Sept. 19--Death of a Salesman (Hudson) (previews begin; opening TBA)

Sept. 22--Sesame Street: The Musical (Theater Row)

Sept. 24--Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge (Public Theater) (previews begin; opening TBA)

Sept. 27--A Raisin in the Sun (Public Theater) (previews begin; opening TBA)

Oct. 2--Leopoldstadt (Longacre)

Oct. 6--1776 (Roundabout/AA)

Oct. 11--Almost Famous (a Shubert theater TBA)

Oct. 20--Topdog/Underdog (Golden)

Oct. 28--Where We Belong (Public Theater) (previews begin; opening TBA)

Nov. 4--Plays for the Plague Year (Public Theater) (previews begin; opening TBA)

Nov. 10--Kimberly Akimbo (Booth)
Nov. 20--KPOP (Circle in the Square)

Dec. 4--A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical (Broadhurst)

Dec. 8--Camelot (Lincoln Center/Vivian Beaumont)

Dec. 11--Some Like It Hot (Shubert)

Fall 2022 (no dates yet)

Between Riverside and Crazy (Second Stage/Hayes)

the bandaged place (Roundabout/Underground)

Camp Siegfried (Second Stage/Tony Kiser)

Cost of Living (MTC/Friedman)

Summer, 1976 (MTC/City Center Stage II)

Where the Mountain Meets the Sea (MTC/City Center Stage I)

2022-23 (no dates or theaters yet)

Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death, Black Orpheus, Cinderella, Come Fall in Love--The DDLJ Musical, Dancin', The Ohio State Murders, Pal Joey, Square One

Winter 2022-23

Dark Disabled Stories (Public)

The Wanderers (Roundabout/Laura Pels)

Spring 2023 

Prime Facie (a Shubert theater TBA)

The Thanksgiving Play (Second Stage/Hayes)

Good Bones (Public)

Poor Yella Rednecks (MTC/City Center Stage II)

Shadow/Land (Public)

2023 and Beyond

Game of Thrones, The Great Gatsby

Future--Good Night, Oscar; The Devil Wears Prada; The Griswolds' Family Vacation; The Karate Kid; Back to the Future; Our Town; The Nanny; The Normal Heart/The Destiny of Me; Sing Street; Smash; Soul Train; The Who's Tommy