The Colorado Mesa University Theatre department performed Clybourne Park at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 8, Nov. 9 and at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Nov. 10. The performance was held at Robinson Theatre inside the Moss Performing Arts Center.
Clybourne Park is a 2010 play written by Bruce Norris and originally premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizon in New York. It was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2011, and a Tony Award for Best Play in 2012. It is rated-R due to its strong language.
Clybourne Park was written as a spin-off to the 1959 play “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry. Mo Lamee explained that Hansberry wrote this play based off of her own experience of her African Amerian family moving into a white neighborhood. The end of “A Raisin in the Sun” leaves the audience hanging with what happens after the family moves into the new house. This is where Norris got his inspiration to continue this play.
“I saw it in New York,” Mo Lamee head of the theater arts department said. “I’ve always been interested in it and the play has a lot of conversation in it that’s happening today around the country.”
The two acts were vastly different from one another with one being set in the 1950’s and the second act in 2009.
The cast only had a total of seven cast members and with the acts being in two separate time periods, each student had two roles.
“I think because it was such a small cast, we got closer than we were before,” Senior Ashli Alderman said. “There is more crew then there is cast.”
One character Betsy was played by Shawna Seals and is deaf. Seals explained that she learned some sign language and the student who plays her husband also learned sign language.
“I am basically a fly on the wall in the first act and then a large instigator in the second act,” Seals said. Seals characters were both pregnant.
“It’s about race, property, relationships between married couples, diversity and some effects of war,” Mo Lamee said. “[Norris] is in someways trying to take the façade of the way we talk about some of these issues and what would happen if we were really in conflict with each other and what would we really say. Its poking around uncomfortable places. It asks a lot of questions.”
Alderman explained that the play was about community. “Act one there is an established white community and then being entered in by a black family and act two there is a black community being entered by a white family,” Alderman said.
“It really forces people to look at themselves and their daily lives and how you interact with other people. I hope people come away with a new perspective,” Seals said.
“This play holds up a mirror to our nation right now. I think mostly I want people to take away is to start a dialogue,” Alderman said.
