For the 2012-2013 Season, Playmakers decided to put A Raisin in the Sun and Clybourne Park in repertory with each other (Side note, since this production, several rep productions of this combination have followed). Most know the classic story of A Raisin in the Sun. Clybourne is one of the many response plays to Raisin. The first part of Clybourne Park takes place at the house the Younger’s are prepared to buy in Raisin. The family recently had a death in the family and has decided to move away and did not care who they sold the house to. The first half of the show has the owners of the house harassed by their neighbors on selling the house to African-Americans. The second half of the show takes place fifty years in the future (2009) and flips the story. In the fifty years that had passed, the neighborhood went from predominately white to predominately black. A white family is wishing to move into the house and due to the damage done and age of the house, they determined that it would be better to demolish the house and build new. This new family is being harassed by the neighborhood association to not demolish the house and instead not move in at all.

    As a Midwestern native, and my wife being from the Chicago area, there was something that resonated with these two shows. I wanted to make sure that I dealt with each of them with some care. I also wanted to try to tie both shows together both in discussion, but in some sort of theme or element. I decided that it would be interesting to tie these shows together with the use of the radio. 

    To start out with Raisin, the first scene takes place as people are getting ready for breakfast, listening to the radio, catching the news & weather. Originally, we also tried to add in the sounds of the building that is commonly heard is this style of housing. Unfortunately, it became too much of an element over the actors. This radio motif and the world outside re-appeared when appropriate to the show. The other motif we used with Raisin was the use of Lorraine Hansberry’s voice in key sections of the piece. I happened to come across an interview with Mike Wallace that resonated with the director.

    For Clybourne, the presence of the Radio was shown off even before the show starts. We had the father figure of the show come out ten minutes before the show started and place a radio on stage for the audience to listen to. The Pre-show announcement then comes from the radio in a stylized way that I wrote for the show. The radio then gets turned back on at the end of Act one going into intermission and turned off at the top of Act two. This intermission sequence was the main method that we used to tell the story of the fifty year passage of time.

    The other sonic element I enjoyed adding to the show was the sound of the city. There is a distinct growth of the city that happens between the fifty years’ time span. This city has seen some major growth between the fifty year time span. While the church remains through this period, the increase in traffic, different vehicles, and the construction happening outside added a color to the soundscape.