And while she did rewrites from a hotel room across the street from the theater, she was too ill to attend rehearsals and previews. Unfortunately, the play that opened on Broadway was unfinished because Hansberry was dying of cancer. She lived among the artists, intellectuals and social activists in Greenwich Village. LUNDEN: Yet Hansberry was writing from personal experience. And there's always this tone of, who does she think she is? GRESHAM: There was a real resistance and intolerance of it, a resentment. But when "The Sign In Sidney Brustein's Window," a critique of white liberalism that takes place in Greenwich Village, debuted in 1964, critics were not as enamored. LUNDEN: That play, which realistically depicted a Black family in Chicago, took Broadway by storm, became a popular film and has subsequently become part of high school curriculums. JOI GRESHAM: You know, she was, like, the it girl coming out of "Raisin In The Sun." Writing "A Raisin In The Sun" was both a blessing and a curse for its young Black playwright, says Joi Gresham, director of the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust. JEFF LUNDEN, BYLINE: Let's address the elephant in the room. It opened last week with a celebrity cast, including Oscar Isaac of "Star Wars" fame. In 1959, playwright Lorraine Hansberry rocketed to stardom with "A Raisin In The Sun." Five years later, she had another Broadway production, "The Sign In Sidney Brustein's Window." That show has rarely been revived, but it's back now.
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