| Lorraine Hansberry evicted? |
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| by Wanda Sabir | |
| Tuesday, 26 June 2007 | |
 The actors are David Westley Skillman and Soraya Kinsey in Lorraine Hansberry Theatre’s 2006 production of Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem, “from okra to greens/ a different kinda love story.” She wasn’t willing to give LHT more time to find another space. “She could have told us this two years ago when AAU bought the building,” Easter said. This is horrible news, given the new season is just a week away, with David Drake’s East Coast production of “2 Boys in a Bed on a Cold Winter’s Night” set to run July 5-29. A stage adaptation of Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” is scheduled for October, followed by the highly anticipated “Black Nativity” pageant. This reminds me of the sad march down Divisadero Street, also in San Francisco, when St. John Coltrane church was evicted. I guess if you can evict God …. But in Hughes’ work, “Black Nativity,” which LHT mounts each year to sold-out audiences, the Christ child’s mother and father are told repeatedly that there is no room at the inn when Joseph tries to find shelter for his expectant wife. Doors are slammed in their faces and, as the story goes, Mary delivers her baby in a barn. Hmm. LHT converted a former YMCA gym into a theatre space for $500,000. Now AAU wants to turn back the clock to its former use? It’s ridiculous, especially given the fact that AAU offers acting classes without a space for students to perform, a gap LHT has filled on a number of occasions. I wasn’t surprised by AAU, given the experience there of my older daughter, Bilaliyah, as a student and then as an employee. While a student there just out of high school, she was ignored at study hall by students and teachers. Then, when she was hired as a greeter over the phone a few years later, the employers were shocked when they saw she was African American, so since they couldn’t fire her without being sued, they created a new, less visible position for her so she wouldn’t be seen by prospective students.  Lorraine Hansberry A more interesting exhibit would have been one that questioned Picasso’s genius and its inspiration, questions raised by artist Fred Wilson in “Art and Installations, “Mining the Museum,” “Speaking in Tongues,” “A Look at the Language of Display” and “Aftermath,” all highlighted in the 2003 retrospective “Fred Wilson: Objects and Installations: 1979-2000” at the University Art Museum and the Pacific Film Archive. Wilson’s work challenges the culture gatekeepers’ use of inherited keys to keep certain voices out of the discourse and to shut others up. Wilson’s work also points to the fact that institutions like AAU aren’t listening and don’t care to listen because they don’t think they have to. Contact their donor base, hit them on their bottom line and perhaps they’ll learn Ebonics. Call the Academy of Art University at (800) 544-2787. Their email is This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it The Lorraine Hansberry website, www.lhtsf.org, lists contact information and a brief but strong letter – it starts, “Don’t end Black theatre in San Francisco” – that you can mail or email to the elected officials representing San Francisco. Picketing is also an option. I wonder where the president, Dr. Elisa Stephens, lives. What about a “Camp Lorraine Hansberry”? You know, like “Camp Casey” and “Camp Pelosi.” Lorraine Hansberry’s dad was a real estate broker who moved into homes in Chicago neighborhoods where Black people hadn’t owned property to widen the discourse for Black homeownership. He took the state to court to fight restrictive clauses that made it legal to discriminate against Black buyers. Though her father won the landmark Supreme Court case of Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32 (1940), the neighbors weren’t happy to have the Black family as neighbors. The playwright wrote of bottles tossed through her front window and crosses burned on her family’s lawn, but her dad felt strongly about his right and his people’s right to live wherever they could afford the mortgage. The themes explored in “Raisin in the Sun” are ones Hansberry had lived as a child. I don’t know if Stanley and Quentin knew it would come to this, but perhaps they need a good lawyer’s services just about now. Renters do have rights, although ownership should be the goal so Black institutions have permanence and longevity. Remember the fight over the Black Rep? They own the building, so though they were pushed, they could push back. Bay View Arts Editor Wanda Sabir can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Visit her website, www.wandaspicks.com, for an expanded version of Wanda’s Picks and for exciting “web exclusives.” |
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