Architectonic Identity & A Raisin in the Sun

August 20, 2024 - September 15, 2024

The entire process of creating a home while Black is fraught with challenges imposed by colonialism across continents. Those deliberately harmed experience the damage personally, and for a moment, feel alone in the struggle to maintain wholeness. A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, TheatreSquared’s 19th season opener, exposes the long-standing struggle imposed upon Black wholeness by systemic and individual acts of disenfranchisement everywhere. Sixty-five years after Hansberry’s brilliant play received the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play of the Year, Dexter J. Singleton directs the presentation of this iconic work that is even more salient today.

Indeed, the Black diasporic experience is menacingly similar across continents and definitively so throughout North America. Art Ventures presents a slice of similarities in the Black diasporic experience when making a home – of making a life. Kamaal Manboard’s Architectonic Identity series of six pieces are embedded with slices of emotional space that allow us to see futurist thinking (resilience) alleviate the pressure of “making do”. The drum beats everywhere.