Schauspielhaus Graz
Lorraine Hansberry
​Les Blancs

Lorraine Hansberry’s life was short but eventful: in 1959, she became the first Black woman to have a play performed on Broadway and the first Black woman and youngest playwright to win New York’s most prestigious theater award. As one of the best-known intellectuals of her time, she was involved in the civil rights movement, and when she died in 1965 at the age of just thirty-four, her friend Nina Simone dedicated the song “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” to her. Nevertheless, today Lorraine Hansberry is largely forgotten. Schauspielhaus Graz is staging her final play—a German-language premiere.

In a fictional African country, three brothers meet again after being separated for a long time. They not only have to come to terms with their family history but must also concretely address the colonial occupation of their homeland by the Whites. Exhibiting masterly dialogues and characterization, Lorraine Hansberry succeeds in cleverly analyzing colonial power relations, including their subtle mechanisms of justification and oppression.