A disturbingly sharp, yet funny satire of American unease with race relations, Clybourne Park, by Bruce Norris, Performing Arts of Woodstock’s final play of its 50th season, opens on May 30 at 7:30 p.m. and runs for ten performances at the Mescal Hornbeck Community Center, Rock City Road, Woodstock.
It is directed by Sande Shurin, director and acting coach in New York City and Woodstock. Clybourne Park, inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, has won a Pulitzer Prize (2010) and a Tony (2011) and several British theater prizes. Its two acts are set in the fictional Chicago neighborhood of Clybourne Park, where the African-American Younger family expects to move in 1959, and 2009, where a Caucasian couple hopes to “improve” the neighborhood by tearing down the original house, now abandoned, and build a McMansion.
The same set of actors plays the parts of the characters in both acts. Although one character is deaf, all of the characters are deaf to each others’ desires and needs, speaking in states of suppressed tension from the beginning. The metaphor of war hovers in the background as the characters misunderstand each other. As Ben Brantley notes in The New York Times, “tact is the first casualty of conversation.”
Performing in Clybourne Park are Chris Grady, Elizabeth Henry-Macari, Kevin Higgins, Stephen Jones, Phillip X Levine, Terri Mateer, Jody Satriani, and Justin Waldo.
For complete show dates visit the PAW website
For reservations call (845) 679‑7900. Tickets are $20, $15 for seniors and students.
Not recommended for children.
photos by Andrea Cabane