Sep 16th 2021

RAISIN: Community Conversation: Diasporic Theater & The Power of Black Narratives

@ 6018North

Online

Opening Thursday, September 16th, at 3:30PM

On view through Sunday, December 19th

A roundtable discussion with leading theater makers from Chicago, Berlin, Stockholm, and London.

RSVP for Event Access: eventbrite.com/o/6018north-11825306735

Moderated by Tracie Hall, Executive Director of the American Library Association.

Featuring: Josette Bushell-Mingo OBE, Principal of The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (UK); Ken-Matt Martin, Artistic Director Victory Gardens Theater (Chicago); Uriara Maciel, Artistic Director of Anastacia Berlin Schwarze-Frauen-Theatergruppe (Berlin); Willa Taylor, Director of Education and Community Engagement at Goodman Theatre (Chicago); Rohan Ayinde, RAISIN artist and interdisciplinary poet (UK).

Across countries and contexts, this group will discuss their individual histories and shared experiences as directors and producers of global theater and stories of Black life.

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Image: Josette Bushell-Mingo OBE, Principal of The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (London). Photo by Tomas Kold

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6018North is pleased to announce RAISIN, an exhibition exploring themes from the classic play A Raisin in the Sun (1959) by Lorraine Hansberry. In the 1960s, A Raisin in the Sun was translated into 30 languages, and won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award in its debut year. Produced in cities around the world, the play has been bringing solidarity to various struggles against injustice; from residential segregation within the United States, migration politics across Europe, class inequality in China, and apartheid in South Africa. With artworks created by Chicago and international artists, the RAISIN exhibition offers local and global perspectives on “home.”

RAISIN features work by: Kioto Aoki (Chicago) / Coletivo Anastácia Berlin (Berlin) / Jared Brown (Chicago) / Marina Viola Cavadini (Milan) / Amy Sanchez Arteaga + Misael Diaz (Cog•nate Collective) (So. California) / Işıl Eğrikavuk (Berlin) / Max Guy (Chicago) / Kyle Bellucci Johanson (Chicago) / Kierah “Kiki” King (Chicago) / Diya Khurana (Mumbai) / Kat Liu (Chicago) / AJ McClenon (Chicago) / Clemens Melzer (Berlin) / Joelle Mercedes (Chicago) / Chip Moody (Chicago) / Joseph Mora (Chicago) / Nahum, Ale de la Puente, Juan José Díaz Infante, and Tania Candiani (Mexico City and Berlin) / zakkiyyah najeebah dumas-o’neal (Chicago) / Alessia Petrolito (Turin) / Delilah Salgado (Chicago) / Aaron Samuels (Los Angeles) / Rohan Ayinde Smith (London) / Brett Swinney (Chicago) / Maryam Taghavi (Chicago) / Gloria Talamantes (Chicago) / Tran Tran (Chicago) / Unyimeabasi Udoh (Chicago) / Nayeli Vega (Berlin) / Amanda Williams (Chicago) / Jakob Wirth (Berlin) / Tintin Wulia (Australia) / Zhiyuan Yang (New York) / Nushin Yazdani (Berlin)

The exhibition is led by curator Asha Iman Veal, curatorial assistants Shannon Lin and Esraa, graduate curatorial assistant Ruby Dudasik, and exhibition associates Alexis Brocchi; in collaboration with the 6018North team Tricia Van Eck and Nathan Abhalter Smith.

RAISIN opens September 17 as a proud partner of the Chicago Architecture Biennial as they present their fourth edition The Available City. A full schedule of public programming will be announced soon, and includes conversations with visual artists, theater scholars, fair-housing advocates, and global migration advocates, as well as original artist-led workshops and performance events.

Our Inspiration

In 1959, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun debuted on Broadway. In this seminal work, Hansberry wrote about the Youngers, a fictional Black American family in Chicago whose late patriarch has left behind a life insurance policy that the family can use to purchase a home and enter the American middle class. Many challenges block this family’s path, and the four adult Youngers debate their options for self-determination within a race-biased society, and whether to move to an affordable yet segregated neighborhood, where they will not be welcome.

In 2021, this exhibition presents multidisciplinary artworks inspired by the local importance and global reach of Hansberry’s narrative.

“A radical Black woman playwright found her excellent work embraced as an arts-based format to encourage dialogue on inclusion and justice in cities across the world,” says curator Asha Iman. “Even after Lorraine Hansberry’s death, the span of her narrative has grown over the past sixty years.”

 

 

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