“OVATION Recommended” “TOP TEN” – Stage Raw
GO! – LA Weekly “Don’t miss this chance to see it” – KCRW
Lorraine Hansberry considered this to be her most important play. It was her final work. Les Blancs depicts the waning days of colonialism crossing into the 20th century as it reveals the impossible moral choices faced by individuals who must reconcile personal happiness with idealism. It is rich with music and dance and set in and around a mission compound in Africa. The time is yesterday, today, and tomorrow– but not very long after that.
“When Lorraine Hansberry wrote this piece she set the story in Africa but it deeply resonates with the civil rights movement in the United States, including gender equality. It’s astonishingly current in terms of equality issues, and I really can’t think of another play out there that combines all the same elements, over such a vast landscape, and stays so brilliantly relevant” – Gregg T. Daniel; Director
Playwright Lorraine Hansberry was the first black playwright to have work produced on Broadway (A Raisin in the Sun – 1959). She became the youngest American, and only the fifth woman to win the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. In 1965, Lorraine Hansberry died of cancer at age 34. As if prescient, in the six years she had between the triumph of her first play and her death, she was extraordinarily prolific. Her second play to be produced on Broadway, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, was in its early run to mixed reviews, when Hansberry died; the curtain came down on that date. To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, an autobiographical portrait in her own words adapted by her former husband and literary executor Robert Nemiroff, was posthumously produced in 1969 and toured across the country. In 1970, Les Blancs, her play about the inevitability of struggle between colonizers and the colonized in Africa, and the impending crisis that would surely grow out of it, ran on Broadway.
Director Gregg T. Daniel is a recipient of the NAACP Best Director award for the International City Theatre’s production of Fences. The production received nominations from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, Ovation and Stage Scene LA. Selected credits include L.A. premiere of Honky by Greg Kalleres for Rogue Machine Theatre (LADCC Award nominee for Best Director – Comedy), a revival of Alice Childress,’ , A Love/Hate Story in Black and White for the Antaeus Company (Winner 2014 Stage Raw Award for Best Revival and Best Ensemble), Frank McGuinness’s Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me (Broadway World Award nominee for Best Director), and the West Coast premiere of Kwawe Kwei-Armah’s, Elimina’s Kitchen (NAACP Award for Best Ensemble) for Lower Depth Theatre Ensemble where he is a founding member and Artistic Director.
Cast: Amir Abdullah (Peter), Bill Brochtrup (Major Rice), Anne Gee Byrd (Mm Neilsen), Aric Floyd (Eric), Fiona Hardingham (Marta), Jason McBeth (Charlie), Matt Orduña (Abioseh), Jonathan P. Sims (Ngago), Joel Swetow (Dr. Willy), Desean Kevin Terry (Tshembe), and ensemble cast.
Les Blancs has been extended to run on Saturdays and Mondays at 8:00pm, Sundays at 3:00pm through July 31, 2017. Rogue Machine is located at The Met, 1089 N Oxford Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90029. Tickets are $40. Reservations: 855-585-5185 or at www.roguemachinetheatre.com
