Lorraine Hansberry Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan will star in the first major New York revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window this February at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, BAM announced today.

Carmel Dagan Staff WriterFrances Sternhagen, a Tony-winning actress with many decades on the stage and screen, died Monday of natural causes in New Rochelle, N.Y. Her son Tony Carlin confirmed her death to the New York Times.She was known for her recurring role as the regal grandmother of Dr.

Darren Aronofsky‘s Protozoa Pictures and Los Angeles Media Fund are launching a joint venture focused on commissioning and producing new live theater projects as well as co-producing and supporting larger productions.

Watching Mountains, which just made its international debut as part of the Toronto Film Festival’s Centerpiece program, I could not help but think of two other landmark films it seems to recall in its own way. One was 2019’s The Last Black Man In San Francisco, a remarkable story of gentrification and its effect on those being edged out of their home that starred Jimmie Falls and launched the career of Jonathan Majors. The other was the 1960 film version of Lorraine Hansberry’s oft-performed A Raisin In The Sun in which Sidney Poitier as Walter Lee Younger played a struggling husband, son, and father with a dream for a new house and a better life for his family.

Jaden Thompson Nathan Louis Jackson, a writer-producer on Netflix’s “Luke Cage” and the playwright behind “Broke-ology,” died on Aug. 22 at his home in Lenexa, Ks. He was 44.

Actress Phylicia Rashad will end her role as Dean of Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts following the 2023-24 school year, Howard University President Wayne A. I. Frederick announced in a press release.

Hollywood is on Broadway — just not for much longer.The Tony-winning “The Sign In Sidney Brustein’s Window” starring “Star Wars'” Oscar Isaac and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s” Rachel Brosnahan has just a handful of shows remaining at the James Earl Jones Theatre before it closes on Sunday, July 2.And if you want to catch the pair of icons along with Tony winner Miriam Silverman and Robert DeNiro’s son Julian (!) live on stage in the revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s 1960s-based political drama, you can still grab last-minute tickets.In fact, seats are available for all remaining shows.At the time of publication, the lowest price we found was $84 before fees on Vivid Seats.Tickets for other shows begin at the $100 to $130 range.By our estimation, that’s not a bad price to catch stars from the “Spider-verse” and the upcoming “Superman” franchises IRL.

Brent Lang Executive Editor When I reach Jeremy O. Harris, he’s about to be whisked upstate to celebrate his birthday. And this one is hitting a little harder than others, and not just because, like all birthdays, it’s a blaring reminder of all the mileage that’s been accumulated. No, it’s because Harris is turning 34, the same age that Lorraine Hansberry, the brilliant, barrier-atomizing playwright behind “A Raisin in the Sun, was when she died in 1965. “I feel aligned with her spiritually,” Harris, who took the theater world by storm with his 2019 Broadway debut, “Slave Play.” “We both went to Broadway for the first time when we were 29 years old. And right now, I’m thinking that my life has been so short, but it’s so much richer because of what she has done for the theater.”

The official opening night of Broadway’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window was last week to make the eligibility cut-off for the 2023 Tony Awards, but a gala opening was just held to celebrate in an even bigger way!

Naveen Kumar The playwright Lorraine Hansberry was near death at age 34 when “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” premiered on Broadway, for a three-month run that ended with her passing in 1965. Set in the heady and libidinous bohemia of Greenwich Village, the play was considered too sprawling and radical a departure from “A Raisin in the Sun,” her landmark drama about a Black Chicago family striving from the margins.  The sublime revival that opened on Broadway Thursday night, starring Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan at the theater recently named for James Earl Jones, is a mind-blowing restoration of an overlooked battleship. Crackling with ideological argument and loaded with withering observations about American progressivism, “Sidney Brustein” is thrilling and unwieldy in a way that too few plays are given sufficient berth to be on Broadway. Exquisitely directed by Anne Kauffman, its first production in over half a century demonstrates both the play’s stunning modernity and its viability as invigorating popular entertainment. 

Rachel Brosnahan and Oscar Isaac just celebrated the opening night of their Broadway play The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window and they toasted the evening at a party thrown by producer Jeremy O. Harris!

The current Broadway season schedule seemed done and dusted at the start of this month: With an opening night of April 26, the new Kander & Ebb musical New York, New York would be the final production of 2022-23, arriving just a day before the April 27 Tony eligibility cut-off date.

Rachel Brosnahan and Oscar Isaac will begin Broadway performances of The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window on April 25 and open on April 27 at the James Earl Jones Theatre.

Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan are heading to Broadway later this month in Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, producers announced today.

The previously announced and long-awaited Off Broadway production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters starring Oscar Isaac and Greta Gerwig has been indefinitely postponed due to scheduling conflicts.

Antonio Ferme editor Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan lit up the stage on Thursday night during the opening of “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Set in the 1960s bohemia of Greenwich Village, the play follows a couple struggling to find their authentic selves during a period of radical social change. Isaac said he was drawn to the story’s examination of identities and how they can fluctuate throughout the course of a marriage or a career. “The real secret is there is no authentic self,” Isaac told Variety before the show. “It’s really hard to get to that place because you have to basically die. The ego death has to happen. And then you have to just allow yourself to feel.”

Rachel Brosnahan and Oscar Isaac are celebrating their new off-Broadway show!

Pedro Pascal steps out with his sister Lux Pascal during a rare outing in New York City. The “Mandalorian” and “The Last Of Us” star and the transgender activist were all smiles while heading to a train station in Brooklyn.The famous siblings took public transportation to avoid the hectic traffic of the Big Apple and enjoy on time from an Off-Broadway performance of Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sydney Brustein’s Window,” starring Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan at the BAM theater.The actor recently made headlines after revealing the downfall of filming “Mandalorian.” According to the star, although the armor is cool, being inside is a different experience.“It’s like putting on a head-to-toe glove with weights on it,” Pedro Pascal tells Empire about Din Djarin’s Beskar get-up.

The Gotham Film & Media Institute paid tribute to the late Sidney Poitier at the awards ceremony taking place at NYC’s Cipriani Wall Street this evening. 

Covid isn’t done with New York’s theater scene just yet. At least four Broadway and major Off Broadway productions have either canceled or postponed performances or temporarily replaced principal cast members in the last week due to the virus.

Rachel Brosnahan was spotted filming late night scenes for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel while wrapping up her work week!

Tonya Pinkins and Francois Battiste are among the cast announced today for the Public Theater’s upcoming production of A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry’s classic drama to be directed by Robert O’Hara (Tony nominated for his direction of Slave Play).

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Danielle Drakes, and Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, the groundbreaking 1959 play that shed light on issues of discrimination and racism in American housing, directed by Christopher Michael Richardson.The plays will be performed by the Tour 72’s ensemble of Jordan Essex, Savannah Gomez, Ariya Hawkins, Max Johnson, Melanie A. Lawrence, Lorenzo Miguel, Walter C.A.

EXCLUSIVE: Emmy winner Sarah Paulson (12 Years A Slave), Gotham Awards winner Anthony Mackie (Captain America), BAFTA winner Martin Freeman (The Hobbit), and triple Emmy winner Uzo Aduba (Orange Is The New Black) will star in feature Clybourne Park, which is a hot package launching for the Cannes market.

Broadway theaters will dim their marquee lights tomorrow night in honor of the late Sidney Poitier.

NEW YORK -- We go to movies not just to escape, but to discover. We might identify with the cowboy or the runaway bride or the kid who befriends a creature from another planet.To see yourself on screen has long been another way of knowing you exist.Sidney Poitier, who died Thursday at 94, was the rare performer who really did change lives, who embodied possibilities once absent from the movies.

Sidney Poitier, the pioneering actor and director who became the first bankable Black leading man in Hollywood, has died at age 94, according to the Bahamian Minister of Foreign Affairs.Poitier, who was born in the U.S. but grew up in the Bahamas, broke multiple racial barriers in his decades-long career, including when he became the first Black actor to win the Academy Award, for his role in 1963’s “Lilies of the Field.”From his first film performance, playing a doctor who treats a bigoted white man in 1950’s “No Way Out,” he blazed a trail by refusing to play roles that traded on racial stereotypes.

Antonio Ferme editorThe 2021 Yale Drama Series Prize has been awarded to Rachel Lynett for her play “Apologies to Lorraine Hansberry (You Too August Wilson).” The work was chosen from several entries by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel.Set in the fictional world of a post-second Civil War, the play showcases an all-Black state called Bronx Bay that is established in order to protect “Blackness.” As Jules’ new partner, Yael, moves into town, community members argue over if Yael,

Douglas Turner Ward, a Tony-winning playwright, director and actor who co-founded New York's trailblazing Negro Ensemble Company, has died. He was 90.