Playwright at Work; 5; Lorraine Hansberry

Naturalism tends to take the world as it is, and so this is what it is. This is how it happens. It is true because we see it every day in life that way, you know, you simply photograph the garbage. In realism, I think the artist who is creating work imposes on it not only what is possible, because this is part of reality too, so that you get a much larger show of what man can do. In play-ride at work, we're exploring the creative methods, the philosophies, and the aspirations of a new group of writers for the theatre.

Our guest today is Lorraine Hansberry. This Hansberry won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for her first Broadway play, a raisin in the sun. Later in the program, we'll see a scene from Ms. Hansberry's work in progress, Tucson. The scene will be directed for us by Mr. Lloyd Richards, who also staged the Broadway production of a raisin in the sun. This scene will be Bramwell Fletcher and Ms. Marie Andrews. Lorraine, a pleasure to have you here today. I'd like to ask you why you write plays, why you've chosen to write for the theatre. Well, I think it's because I am particularly attracted to a medium where not only do you get to do when we do in life every day, you know, talk to people, but to be very selective about the nature of the conversation, it's an opportunity to treat character in the most absolute relief, one against the other, so that everything, sympathy and conflict is

played so sharply, you know, even a little more than a novel. And I suppose it's my own private sense of drama that makes that appeal to me. A desire to talk to people, a desire to talk to people and to, I suppose, also have them do what you want them to do ultimately. Your character. Yes. Are there any particular themes which concern you as a dramatist or are you, is it more general? The human race concerns me and everything that that implies, which is ambitious thing you can say at the same time, the most modest too, because I can't think of anything that people do where conflict is born, but isn't dramatically interesting, and of course it's the role of the dramatist to select which part is most interesting, and when you don't you get a very bum play. You said in an interview I think that you wrote a raisin in the sun from a specific intellectual point of view, is that true and if it is what was that point of view?

Yes, I happen to believe that the most ordinary human being to almost repeat what I just has within him elements of profundative, of profound anguish that there is, you don't have to go to the kings and queens of the earth. I think the Greeks and the Elizabethans did this because it was a logical concept, but every human being is an enormous conflict about something, even if it's how you get to work in the morning and all of that, so that I thought that it would be very interesting in the contemporary American theatrical moment to explore the most ordinary man, say, on the south side of Chicago, we think we know, he drives you to work and you say, well he's a nice fellow, but see what he's like at home in some of the ordinary events by the time he gets to work, he's a complicated and large person.

Are you trying to find tragedy in these people and in the smaller people? Ultimately, I would like to be able that we think in drama that that's the highest form of drama, I don't think that the hero and raisin in the sun, but as drama it's the root that I'm trying to go, yes. Do you, would you call raisin in the sun a naturalistic play? I would not. I would not. I would not. That's just realism. What's the difference? It's enormously different. Well, naturalism tends to take the world as it is, and say, this is what it is. This is how it happens. It is true because we see it every day in life that way, you know, you simply photograph the garbage can and realism. I think the artist who is creating the realistic work and poses on it, not only what is, but what is possible, because this is part of reality too, so that you get a much

larger potential of what man can do and requires much greater selectivity. You don't just put everything that seems, you put what you believe is. In this framework, would you call Shakespeare a realistic writer? It's the greatest of them all. This is why, for instance, the ghost and whatnot are not outside of realism and how it happens. Yes. Because it's based in the reality of what a man envisions in himself. It's simply a way to embody conscience. I think Shakespeare is the greatest realism. We could get that element back into contemporary theater. I think we'll be closer to drama of stature against him. The play you're working on now is called Toussaint, and perhaps you might tell us who Toussaint was and briefly what it's about. Toussaint is the first name of the great Haitian liberator, Toussaint Louverture, who most

Americans have never heard of, despite the fact that in my opinion he was probably greater than even Jose Marti or Simone Bolivar or even our own Washington, there is this possibility. In the 18th century, and he was a field slave who ultimately organized the Haitian people to throw out the armies of Bonaparte and to create the Haitian Republic. Will we see Toussaint in the scene that we're going to see himself? No, from my own point of view, I think what is interesting is something that will try to show the nature of the people who are involved in the struggle which is about to envelop Haiti, the first scene deals with the plantation manager and his wife, and what the slave society does to all people involved, not merely the slave. Good, I think with that introduction we'll have a look at the scene if we can. The last glide Richards to set the scene for us if you would please lie.

Haiti, 1780, the year of insurrection, the year before Major Rebellion. The place is the upstairs bedroom of Béon de Bezure, and his wife, Lucier. Béon is the manager of a plantation, and they're preparing for dinner, preparing to entertain and miss your pity on, from France. The point remains that I am in no mood to hear your dull tires and talk of acreage and thaw this, or in equally dull tires and discussion of the present political state of

a pair of France. The current palpitations of the French directory don't interest me, the polling himself doesn't interest me. I am not interested in your guesses and I shall not want to hear one single word that they have had to say when they are gone. Well nice meeting you will hear it this evening. Not only that, you will listen to the entire length of time that their entertainment may be planned. In fact, you will make it seem to our guests that you have never enjoyed anyone's company, quite so much. You will love your disarmament and enchanting little laugh, at each and every end of the studio. They may care to tell, and you will stretch your eyes wide with delight, at each item of the Parisian gusset with madam, if you are, they care to offer, you will do it, you will do all this.

Now I will ring for destiny so that you may begin your twilight. How you do sigh of late pay or you have turned into one long sigh. Is there any wonder? I can only tell you how tired I am. What did you say? I said if I could only tell you what my agony is. Oh, Bill, don't do this too dreadful when you are feeling agonized. It is the measure of our marriage now, they all, that you wear the clay from her grave right into our bedroom. Remember, when you still cared enough to at least have the mad meticulously cleaned before you came home to me after your visit up there. I had, I think, a shred of love left for you because of that. Do you still take wild orange blossoms? I've often wondered about the specialness of orange blossoms.

Did you used to wear them in her hair? How foolish you are to go, I knew. Never knew what them on her grave does she cry out to you. Oh, Mum, what's he to my strong one, my ivory guard, how good that you come to see me. Do you still love me, my love, my must? What made you bury her up there, Bill? Was it some special romantic plea on the deathbed? I can't talk to you when you're like this. Yes, you're right, Bill, and I am being suffocating. I should have taught myself not to care or not to know as is the fashion of the wives of Santa Domingo. We shall forget it all when we're back home in France. I am home. I've laid to seem to forget my darling that I am a creole. This is my home, the sea is in my blood, the mountains my very brain, and the king feels down there while they're on, they are the stuff of this fucking year flesh of mine.

I intend to die. The rich romance of the girls. If you like. Well, tell me about the petty office. You knew them in Paris, didn't you? I never met his wife, I met him once or twice at noise. What's he like? Tell me that, and I shall tell you to a detail what his wife is like. I am brilliant at that, you say so yourself. He's a man. Where are my gothas? What sort of man? The man, that's all where are my gothas? Why are you selling now I've changed my mood, why don't you change your mood? I'm not being salon, I'm looking for my gothas. You are true gentlemen, you would have someone dressy. I despise having anybody hovering over me while I'm dressy. I asked you to tell me about pity off. I've told you all that you need to know.

I sell pity on you, the courier, and my employer in Paris, was your knowing. He's come to visit the estate, return to France, and give his personal estimation to Norway, if I'm to stay here one more year, I must have a good report, just one more year. And then we shall go to live in Paris, then we shall go to live in Paris. Now my sweetie will get dressed. None of the servants ever come when they're called in this house. I ran my fields the way you run this house. Oh man, how you love to give orders. You do try so hard to be an arm and his old grandpa. Poor little pig, poor little pity bourgeois who likes to sit a striders horse in the fields and play out at being master, not merely manager of a great planet issue. A highly esteemed employer, who esteems nothing at all, is too occupied to care to see for

himself how one of his boring old plantations is buried. But since instead, his insignificant little courier is here after yet to spy on you. How dare me your clawed planes, but I like it. Yes, he would like it, and do not call him my clawed, I do not wish to warn you about that again. Who will you share? Poor little Creole pig, who lacks all sense of the refinements of style that she would accompany the plane of a neighborhood. You have stated the matter as it is. You self-absorbed, prancing affected little bourgeois worshiper of the aristocracy. How your insults have ceased to affect me, how pallet they have become, isn't that depressing? It depresses me terribly, that nothing about you matters, not even your insults, you are

treasured inside. I am sorry I should have hurt you with my regrets. Cut me! I told you a thousand times. How eloquent you are! I would have my own difficulties in those days. It is that tear! You should forgive me! Forgive! How does one forgive hearing one's own grandmother described as formed, or hearing your own father called the wep of the discharge of an income here in Pankley, buccanea? They have never heard such contempt, even for the slaves. But then of course, they fetch higher prices on the block. Yeah. What are your purchase? It is a creature purchased to transform your laces and sit right ahead of your dining borders. No true index of value, nor is it an index of the daily hourly humiliation of my awareness of the bastard legions roaming this plantation, opening and closing doors for me. Waking me on my own table, and came in your head to my own home. I will not have these words in this house. You will stop at this instant. Suppose the girls should hear it.

Hear it! You think they don't know it? They are island born to be all. Who is your two song having punished now? It is like Simeon is being whipped. Two song is a brute. He is a steward and an excellent one. What will happen to the plantation if he ever ran away, they own one? He will not away. He is content. Two song has his own sense of the order of things. Yes. I think so. How strange the two of you are together in the fields. You with your wide brimmed hat to stride your horse seeming to command. And he, the slave, barefoot, beside you, with the yellow handkerchief and hideous face, commanding. I have told you time and time again that he is not a slave. Where is he free?

No, he is not free. Ben, he must be a slave. You are either one thing or the other. It is a special situation as a woman who would not understand it. Oh, but explain it to me, Bill. I will try very hard to understand it. And tell me about yourself. Are you a free man, Dale? Of course I'm a free man. Then why haven't you left Santa Domingo long ago? What is it that keeps a free man where he does not wish to be? Tell me what is freedom they owned a barrier. As an abstraction, that is something that's hard to explain. At least of all these days for a Frenchman. Ah! Ah! Do you think he gets pleasure from it? Because he does. Personally, I don't think so. I've watched his merciless way with the slaves and I saw no pleasure in it. What do you mean?

I'm woman's reasoning. It would bore you or make you laugh. I shall give it to myself. Excellent. I only know that two song knows how to drive men. Me? Isn't there a difference between slaves and other men, Bill? In the sense that I meant it just now, they're all the same. I saw him once when he was having side Ellie whipped. He stood quite near with his arms folded across his chest, watching, but the most complicated expression on his face that I have ever seen. Yes, he's a weird old buck if that's what you mean. But one thing is certain he's content. I wish I could say the same for the others. Running away. Oh, in the bellylessness. But two song is a special kind of black. There's something strange and almost mystical in his acceptance. I asked him one day quite casually, you know, about the insurrections.

He weighed the question away as though he were impatient to listening to the subject. Two songs are wise men. Now, my sweet you'll get dressed. I shall expect you downstairs and at least an hour. And the next one to you, ma'am. Thank you. I'd like to open the discussion by asking Lorraine what you were working for in this scene and how well you feel it was achieved. Well, as a preliminary scene, as what will I still hope be the very beginning of the play, it was an effort to set preliminary character to principles,

and to discover some personal aspects of their lives before we see them in conflict with other people in the play so that the audience is able at once to begin to relate to them what may not be entirely sympathetic roles as the play evolves, but as human beings, which is always a certain measure of sympathy. This is why I want them to be people in our minds first. Lloyd, what problems did you deal with in doing the scene and how well do you think it came off? The problem was to get it all in. The fascinating, absolutely fascinating part of working on Lorraine's work is that there are so many levels of work to get in. It isn't just the obvious. There are things being said about not just the characters. There are things being said about the time, the milieu, and to suggest those things and to work out of those things, particularly like in this scene.

For me, there were the three levels of slavery. The level of slavery that existed exists with Tucson and the relationship to Tucson. The actual slaves, which you see in the scene even setting up the table, you don't see it here, but it happens if you see it on the stage. Then there's the level of slavery of the wife, a woman bought, not a woman loved, a woman purchased really, and the effective slavery on her. Then ultimately, they all himself, a man who's a slave to the system. He can't break out of it himself. It dehumanizes him. Right down the line, and this effect on each individual, and what it causes them to do to the other, was the thing that I was working for in the scene. And the thing that I think is there, and must be realized, then it's fascinating to work on. I certainly think it was realized. Did you have those three levels in mind when you wrote the scene, Lorraine? Yes, I'm so glad to hear that this is what Lloyd feels about it. It grows out of a thought of mind that, as I study history, that virtually all of us are what our circumstances allow us to be, and that it really doesn't matter whether you're talking about the oppressed or the oppressor.

And oppressive society will dehumanize and degenerate everyone involved. And in certain very poetic and very true ways at the same time, it will tend to make, if anything, the oppressed have more stature. Because at least they are arbitrarily placed in the situation of overwhelming that which is degenerate, in this instance, a slave society. It doesn't become an abstraction, it has to do with what really happens to all of us in a certain context. And which is what really happened in Haiti with Tucson, isn't that? Yes. Are there any particular problems you found inherent in writing a working on an historical play? Yes, what I think a dramatist has to do is to thoroughly inundate himself or herself. And an awareness of the realities of the historical period, and then dismiss it.

And then become absolutely dedicated to the idea that what you are going to do is to create human beings whom you know in your own time. So that all of us sitting out in the audience feel that, oh yes, we know him, no matter what period, this is the 1700s. But we must feel I have had this experience, I have known this person, so that once you know the realities of the time, you use them really as residue at the back of the head. So that you know you don't have them go out and get an automobile. But where the human emotion is universal in the time sense as well as the world sense. Well you spoke in the first section about the realistic play, the dramatist, superimposing his own solution, aren't you stuck with the facts of history in a play like this? Oh, you have to be true to the facts of history, but within that context many things are possible about the supposition of human reactions to a situation. But you don't have the French when the revolution obviously because that would be against realers.

And wishful thinking. Yes, I'm fine. Lloyd, in a hypothetical situation if you were putting this play into rehearsal tomorrow, would you ask Lorraine for any changes in the scene? And now, completely able to judge, I think this scene as it exists works with minor changes here in there. I know she has some ideas about that. But this scene exists within other scenes that are going on at the same time. This scene is upstairs, downstairs, the slaves are setting the table. You find too many people, which is also indicative of a slave society, where as Lorraine said once when we were discussing it, 40 people to wait on four. One only brings in the political forms of the napkin rings, and that's all he has to do. And just people standing around a waste of it, that you see. And that will show in the scene. And the outside, the waste of human energy, the waste of human life. And this taking place within it. Now, I'd have to see all that to see what minor changes would have to be made.

I think they'd be major at this point. Lorraine, did you learn anything from seeing a scene performed? Yes, both in terms of strengths and weaknesses. I think it does work dramatically. There are points where it's a little static. And some static quality in this kind of work is desirable. I have toyed with the idea in my head already, which this makes me wonder about, again, the possibility of a third character being in the scene. Yes, who would be a slave, a male servant, who really is dressing, and this would be one of the affectations of the aristocracy that they own has taken on. And where this man is literally there. Because this, again, is the dehumanizing character of such a social god. And it does affect the theatrical, I think. I may not do it. I don't know. But it's one of them. And it's indicative today. Yes. Any bell boy. Couldn't tell you that this thing. Or a taxi driver, I suppose. Yes. Or made.

Lorraine, what would you say have been your most satisfying moments as a playwright? Well, I would think, just immediately, the audience reaction to the one play after all that has been before the public, and that is raised in the audience reaction, how, in what sense. But we were often struck with the fact that it, as theater, it seemed to us, we had the most responsive spectacularly so audiences that I had seen a long time in the Broadway theater, where people literally were almost talking to the actors. I don't think I could never came down when you didn't hear the women say, don't forget your plant. Your mother. Yeah. And that's what I'm trying to say then. I do feel that it did reach the audience, and no writer ever really wants more than that. No matter how we say it, that's ultimately what we want. Thank you. Today on Playwright at Work, we've investigated the working philosophy of two gifted additions to the American theater. Our guests were Lorraine Hansberry and Lloyd Richards. Thank you.

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