Just call or visit the box office (415 474-8800 or 450 Post Street, 2nd Floor) and get two tickets to any Wednesday performance of Rejoice! for the price of one!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Lorraine Hansberry Theatre.

Do the names Denzel Washington, Danny Glover and Phylicia Rashad ring a bell? Well Douglas Turner Ward has been highly influential in their acting careers and those of numerous others and the legend himself will be in attendance for opening night! (Oct. 14th) So come out and join us for a new season, new home and a toast to a legend!

First week. The cast and I read the plays as a group and talked about them. While the characters in Almost Nothing were already cast, no one was cast in Day of Absence. I wanted the comedy to come out of the work of the company. Almost every actor has to play more than one character. Rather than assigning actors to characters, we worked with the material and waited to see what actor and what character ended up together. I asked the actors what they wanted to do, what they thought was funny. We let the characters and actors find each other. They found each other by the end of the first week.

Second week. We got the play up on its feet, meaning we started blocking the action on stage and constructing the world of the play. In Day of Absence that includes the town where the play takes place, the mayor’s office and the bedroom of the couple who live in the town. It was different in Almost Nothing, which required more discussion and analysis because, in discovering who the people were, we had to deal with economic and gender differences and examine the motives more closely. For example, Antônio, in Almost Nothing, carries a gun. We had a long discussion about why the character carried a gun. Had he been mugged? Did he carry a gun because he was rich and felt like he had something to protect? Or did he carry a gun because it made him feel like more of a man?

Going into the Third Week, we really have to start to fill in the picture, begin the hard work of knitting the pieces together and developing the ideas and themes we’ve identified, the relationships the emotional lives. We have to refine the business in the comedy (the things that make you laugh.) These things happen through rehearsal – taking the play apart, moment to moment, and then putting it back together as a piece.

Steven Anthony Jones
Artistic Director

We’ve got big plans at Lorraine Hansberry Theatre!

But we can’t do it alone. Help us expand our audience by throwing a Subscription Party! Subscription Parties may be held in your home, or at Lorraine Hansberry Theatre.

We supply the talent and the beverages (wine and beer), and you provide the food (hors d’oeuvre & finger foods), plus you supply about 30 to 60 of your friends, family and co-workers that are not yet part of the LHT family.

If you wish to host a Subscription Party, or just want to learn more, send an email to Jessica@LHTSF.org, or simply call the LHT offices at 415 345-3980.

We have already held several very successful Subscription Parties. Here’s a link to the announcement for our biggest party to date, which will occur tomorrow evening, commencing at 6pm: PARTY ANNOUNCEMENT

The theatre is located on the second floor of the Kensington Park Hotel and is the former home of Theatre on the Square and the Post Street Theatre. Built by the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (BPOE) in 1925, the Spanish-Gothic style building also houses the restaurant, Farallon, and is right in the heart of downtown San Francisco.  In 1982, the flat-floored BPOE meeting hall was converted for use as Theatre on the Square. Architect Gene Angell, who also designed the Thrust Stage Theatre at Berkeley Rep, Brava for Women in the Arts, and LHT’s old home on Sutter Street, oversaw the redesign.

Our 2011–2012 season will commence in October with a program of two one-act plays, Almost Nothing by Marcos Barbosa, and Douglas Turner Ward’s classic, Day of Absence. The season will continue in December with a brand new holiday show, Rejoice! In February, we will present British playwright Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange, and we will finish our season with Blues for an Alabama Sky by Pearl Cleage.

If you have not already done so, please join us as a subscriber and be part of our return to San Francisco’s Union Square Theatre District.

PROJECT1VOICE is a national grassroots movement designed to cultivate artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation among African-American theatre organizations, along with preserving their legacies and those of African-American playwrights. These theatres remain at the forefront of developing and sustaining African-American playwrights, directors, actors and other theater professionals. PROJECT1VOICE brings attention and assistance to these mainstays of employment for theatre artists of color.

$30 Admission
All proceeds go to support Lorraine Hansberry Theatre & its programs

Click here for more information

But Wait! Now, when you aim your smartphone’s browser at LHTSF.ORG, you will find a whole new experience awaiting you!

Marc just finished thoroughly testing the new “mobile” version of the site — he watched two slideshows and eight YouTube videos. The coolest feature? You can subscribe to the 2011-2012 season with your smartphone! How cool is that?

Now, regrettably this blog is not very smartphone-friendly, but hopefully the folks over at WordPress will get a clue, and fix that issue soon.

We feel so very au courant!