As Torchbearer Of Lorraine Hansberry’s Rich Repertoire, She Is Helping To Shine A Light On One Of Her Lesser Known Plays

At the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust, which represents and oversees the late writer’s literary work, there’s a guiding mantra: “Lorraine Is Of The Future.”

The prolific and accomplished activist, artist and writer was the inspiration of Nina Simone’s song “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. She wrote the play A Raisin In The Sun which opened on Broadway in 1959 when she was just 29. The play would go on to be published in over 30 languages and continues to produced around the world.

“Never before in the entire history of the American theater had so much of the truth of Black people’s lives been seen on the stage,” said James Baldwin of the groundbreaking work that centers on a Black family living in the segregated south side of Chicago. And Hansberry became the first Black woman to have a play staged on Broadway.

“Lorraine was an incredible student of history and culture. She had the ability to see forward in a clear way and had an understanding and sensibility that came before feminism and the Civil Rights movement took form,” says Joi Gresham who is trustee of the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust which licenses all of Hansberry’s copyrighted works and is the torchbearer of her rich legacy. “She was living intersectional before there was a word for that. Lorraine was a quintessential humanist. She believed in people, like she believed in her characters in her plays.”

In 1964, Hansberry’s second play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, debuted on Broadway. The play takes place in Greenwich Village in the 1960s as Sidney Brustein, his wife Iris and their friends are trying to navigate a changing world and challenge what is constantly expected of them.

“The wonderful thing about this play is that you have to throw out whoever you thought Lorraine was. We have to put that to the side in order to reacquaint ourselves with her range,” says Gresham about the play that revolves on a white couple. “Otherwise it creates so much cognitive dissonance that you really can’t wrap your mind around it….Because I tend to talk about her the way I would talk about her as the author of A Raisin in the Sun.”

The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window closed in January, 1965, two days before Lorraine Hansberry died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 34.

As Gresham explains when Hansberry wrote Sidney Brustein, she was in a different place and had a different mission. “She had this awareness that she wasn’t here for long and knew she was fighting for her life. She said what she needed to say and went for broke,” says Gresham, whose father, Robert Nemiroff, had been married to Lorraine Hansberry and maintained a close collaborative partnership throughout her life, continuing to be her literary executor after her death. “She takes risks that only a person facing their own immortality could plunge into.”

This month The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window opens at the Brooklyn Academy of Music at the BAM Harvey Theater. Directed by Anne Kauffman, the play stars Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan. Playing a key role in the production Gresham has been deeply involved in the play’s dramaturgy and collaborated on the script with Kauffman.

With The Sign In Sidney Brustein’s Window Hansberry’s mission was to write a protest play inspiring people to self-examine. For many, it remains timeless. “There’s something about it that is burning and immediate, no matter when you’re seeing it. It’s saying something about commitment, liberalism and retreating that is needed now as much as it was needed in 1964,” says Gresham. “It was needed for people who were coming out of McCarthyism and the Cold War. They were in their twilight time before the war in Vietnam, full-blown civil rights movement, the women’s movement and black power movement. And In that twilight, Lorraine was shining the light forward. She was shining it to really confront us.”

For Gresham, who grew up in Hansberry’s home in Croton-on-Hudson after she passed away, found a sense of hope in The Sign In Sidney Brustein’s Window. “It’s all there in her writing. We don’t have to look any further than that,” says Gresham. “When you go see this play, all you have to do is listen and receive. Listen to the challenge that she’s making to find our own activism:To find our own ability to believe in one another, ourselves and follow our dreams.”

Jeryl Brunner: What was it like growing up in Lorraine’s home in Croton-on-Hudson? (Joi Gresham’s mother, Jewel Handy Gresham-Nemiroff, was married to Lorraine’s former husband, Robert Nemiroff.)

Joi Gresham: Lorraine was my muse. She was this very real spiritual presence who surrounded me. I was able to benefit from watching my father single-handedly build this legacy and literary estate, and pour all of his skill into it. Her physical presence was all around. All her writing, the paintings she loved, her music, her books, were all there. I was extremely drawn to her.

Brunner: And wasn’t the book, To Be Young Gifted and Black, dedicated to you and her cousins?

Gresham: Yes. There was a very real family connection and a sense of belonging to her. She is so much a part of me. I grew up as part of her family. Her sister was my auntie. Her niece was my cousin.

Brunner: You were very involved in the development of the Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. What did you do as script editor?

Gresham: My role flowed out of my close work with the play’s director, Anne Kauffman, and the contact that she gives me with the cast and the opportunity to watch the rehearsal process. I am working with our LHLT dramaturg, Drew Lichtenberg. We also worked together in the same capacity on the National Theatre/Yael Farber production of Les Blancs in London.

Drew has the keen and trained ears to hear and compare Hansberry’s writing and notes that offer a developmental vision of where she is going. These two plays are part of my Lorraine Hansberry Restoration Project. This exclusive project and laboratory serves as a means to provide dramaturgical and background research that can later assist me in editing and preparing future book and acting editions of Hansberry plays.

Brunner: What is your process?

Gresham: My process and the parameters of my creative actions are largely drawn from my father, Robert Nemiroff and his practice and methods of listening to the master directors and actors with years of experience. They really dove into the plays during production and offered invaluable insights.

It is all about listening to Lorraine, and it is all on the page. I am guided by the rule that my father set from the beginning, that Lorraine left it all on the page, it’s all there. We are never to change or rewrite what she has written, though we may move around the parts for better sense and flow. And now that authority is mine alone. It’s a humbling task and responsibility.