Named to honor the trailblazing playwright of A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry Theatre (LHT) is one of the West Coast’s oldest and most renowned professional theaters dedicated to creating theatrical works by, for, and about the Black experience. LHT supports a new generation of aspiring Black artists, curates theater experiences that validate Black life, and invites audiences to witness Black history and culture. LHT supports theater-makers by providing the necessary resources to realize their visions, offering career development opportunities and programs for diverse individuals, and holding spaces to communicate, commune and thrive.
In recent years, LHT has moved to center Black female & femme identifying playwrights through the company’s innovative New Black Voices Program, which aims to support a new generation of Black artists as they create socially impactful works that uplift Black voices, and celebrate community.
Our Namesake:
Lorraine Hansberry
Our namesake, Lorraine Hansberry wrote the landmark play A Raisin in the Sun, which opened on Broadway to enormous success. With A Raisin in the Sun’s debut, Hansberry was the first Black female playwright to have a play performed on Broadway, as well as the youngest American and only fifth woman to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Politically active, Hansberry worked tirelessly on U.S. civil rights issues as well as global struggles against colonialism and imperialism, particularly crusading for the role of women in activism. She died tragically young at age 34, of pancreatic cancer, but left an enormous legacy, with her essays and plays continually adapted into new works, including songs (“To Be Young, Gifted, and Black” by Nina Simone) and musicals (the Tony Award-winning Best Musical Raisin). A supporter of gay rights and member of the queer community, Hansberry was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1999.
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Inspired by the meteoric rise of this playwright and activist, Stanley E. Williams and Quentin Easter established African American theatre as part of the San Francisco downtown theatre scene. In 1981, they founded Lorraine Hansberry Theatre (LHT) in the heart of the San Francisco theatre district.
After the passing of both founders in 2010, Steven Anthony Jones took the helm as Artistic Director. Upon his retirement in June 2017, Aldo Billingslea stepped up as Interim Artistic Director, followed by Darryl V. Jones. Margo Hall became the LHT’s Artistic Director in 2021.
LHT has produced more than 135 plays, including West Coast and World Premieres, experimental works, classics in the African American canon, lively musicals, and poignant socio-political dramas.
LHT’s presentations range from the works of Nobel Laureates Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, and Toni Morrison to Pulitzer Prize-winning writers Charles Fuller, Alice Walker, and August Wilson; to large-scale musicals celebrating Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Lester Young, Fats Waller, Eubie Blake, and others; to award-winning dramas by James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, and our namesake Lorraine Hansberry; to pioneering experimental theatre artists Adrienne Kennedy, Ntozake Shange and Maria Irene Fornes, and new works by Robert Alexander, Roger Guenveur Smith, David Rousseve Prince Gomolvilas, and Samm-Art Williams, among others.
LHT attracts one of the most diverse audiences of any theatre in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it prides itself on being inclusive and welcoming.