'Clybourne Park' Provokes, Prods At Racial Issues

Typically, the first time Hampton Theatre Company debuts a play is opening night. For its next production, director Sarah Hunnewell is making an exception.

It is not a question of quality. “Clybourne Park”—the third production in the theater company’s 30th season—has won playwright Bruce Norris the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play in 2011. By the following year, he had added the Theatre World Award and the Tony Award for Best Play to his collection.

The issue lies with the subject matter. In a national climate buzzing with racial tension electrified by the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner—two unarmed African-American men killed by police officers—a play examining race, gentrification and even real estate in a Chicago neighborhood is not easy to swallow, despite its humor.

And so, during Wednesday night’s dress rehearsal, Quogue Community Hall will open its doors a day early for a hand-selected audience to watch the provocative production before anyone else—and to let the company know what they think.

“We think the actors may be startled by the reactions they get. I think they will be all over the map, and that people will laugh in places we don’t expect it,” Ms. Hunnewell said. “This play is supposed to make people uncomfortable. It’s intended to make everyone uncomfortable. It’s showing, in a way, how uneasy everyone is, and always was, with the subject.”

Mr. Norris’s first brush with racism himself dates back to his Texan childhood, in particular his parents, who moved their child to a school district without busing, so as to avoid African-American classmates.

Irony reared its unbiased head when, soon after his first day, the young boy found himself watching Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” in class, and this story about a lower-class, African-American family’s struggle to gain acceptance in Chicago stayed with him.

“He loved it,” Ms. Hunnewell said. “It stuck in his mind, the fact that there was only one white character in it. He was an actor before a playwright, and he said, ‘I wish I could be in that play, but there’s only one white character.’ Many years later, it got him to thinking about writing a new play about the white character. It’s what happened next.”

The year is 1959. The white character in question, Karl Linder, has just begged a family in Clybourne Park not to sell its home to an African-American family, in order to preserve the all-white Chicago neighborhood. Mr. Norris takes artistic liberty by revisiting the then-conflict in Act I and, in Act II, the same neighborhood 50 years later—which is now all black, facing an imminent threat of gentrification.

The seven-member cast turns on its head, portraying completely different characters in the second half, even though racism is still ever-present.

“Is there really change? Does the change people hope for and talk about really exist, or is everything always the same because people are basically the same? Tribal and territorial and, perhaps some would say, not very nice?” Ms. Hunnewell posed. “Bruce Norris was examining the nature of his own racism. The premise is in the broader sense of the word—everyone is a racist in some way, he said, depending on what that means. And working on this play has made me aware of that every day, in our lives. It could be racism between anything and everything.

“It will be a controversial play. We’re very much looking forward to seeing how people react to it. I think it will get people talking,” she continued. “It’s a very challenging play. I think we were possibly a little bit intimidated by that. But we like to race into the challenge.”

Hampton Theatre Company will open “Clybourne Park” on Thursday, March 12, at 7 p.m. at Quogue Community Hall. Additional performances will stage on Thursdays and Fridays at 7 p.m., Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sunday 2 p.m., through March 29. Tickets are $25, $23 for seniors and $10 for students age 21 and under with ID. For more information, call (631) 653-8955, or visit hamptontheatre.org.