As we get ready to open Beneatha’s Place at the Young Vic theatre in London, it has been beautiful to dance again with the genius that is Lorraine Hansberry. She was an Afrofuturist whose plays spoke to what was happening at the time and things that were yet to happen in Africa. When we think about Black politics, we don’t often think about the 1950s and how radical it was. Hansberry was one of those 1950s radical Black thinkers who were standing on the shoulders of those who had gone before, such as Marcus Garvey, and laying the groundwork for those who came afterwards, such as the civil rights movement in the 60s and the Black Power movement of the 1970s.
My first encounter watching her play A Raisin in the Sun was here at the Young Vic more than 20 years ago, in a production starring Lennie James. I remember being moved by the portrayal of this Black family’s aspirational dreams and relating to a mother who is trying to negotiate with her son’s perception of his own masculinity and what he should be doing with his life. Yet, of all the characters, I found myself most drawn to and resonating with Beneatha. She was Afrocentric at a time when that was not fashionable, she wanted to redefine herself and be someone else and, at the end of the play, as a diasporic African, she articulated her desire to want to go to Africa.
