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Bruce Norris’s darkly humorous two act play “Clybourne Park,” a dissection of race, gentrification and real estate.
Both acts of the play take place in the living room of a bungalow in a Chicago neighborhood. The first, set in 1959, is an Arthur Milleresque drama about a middle-class white family, their black maid and a visitor from the neighborhood association who wants to keep a “colored family” from buying the house.
In the second act the tide has turned. Fifty years later the neighborhood has become predominantly black and gone through a period of decline but is now starting to recover. A white couple who have purchased the house and want to make major changes encounter resistance from a black couple and others in the community.
Urban cycles.
the neighborhood...
segregation
domination
all white association
segregation
conversation
integration
saturation
domination
all black association
segregation
conversation
integration
gentrification
domination
all white association
segregation
continuation
© Ed Meredith
August 14, 2011