The permanent previously-announced Lorraine Hansberry sculpture To Sit A While by artist Alison Sarr was unveiled at an Aug. 23 dedication ceremony at Chicago’s Navy Pier Lake Stage at Polk Bros Park. Hansberry, who was a lesbian, was best known for her play A Raisin in the Sun.
This free and open to the public event featured a pop up spoken-word performance at the sculpture with performances by poets Imani Elizabeth Jackson, Maya Odim and Ming Joi Washington.
There were also excerpts of inaugural Hansberry Lilly Playwright Fellowship recipients playwright and performer Danielle Stagger’s RENT FREE and Mexican American poet, performer and theater artivist Amalia Oliva Rojas’ In The Bronx Brown Girls Can See Stars Too (Or What the Fuck Is You Lookin’ At?) plays performed by members of the Congo Square Theater, with stage directions read by Ariel Beller for both performances.
Stagger’s work was performed by Alexis J Roston and Lydia Moss and Rojas’ work was performed by Andrea San Miguel, Sol Fuller, Demetra Dee, Jocelyn Zamudio, Jordan Steve and Aiszah Maria Rangel.
Additionally, writer, playwright, poet, educator and community leader Mahogany L. Browne (who also praised Hansberry) read from her work Black Girl Magic.
Speakers included Navy Pier’s Chief Administrative and Equity Officer Arnaldo Rivera; City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events Commissioner Clinée Hedspeth; Navy Pier’s Vice President of Arts, Culture and Engagement Erika Taylor; The Lillys Founder and Former Executive Director, The Count Founder, playwright and book writer/lyricist Julia Jordan; and the first and only woman to be a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner for Drama playwright, screenwriter, installation artist, Columbia School of the Arts professor, Park Avenue Armory artist-in-residence and The Lillys Board Member Lynn Nottage; Saar and Congo Square Theater Artistic Director Ericka Ratcliffe.
Rivera told the crowd that they “take a lot of pride at being a cultural hub for the City of Chicago and we are incredibly honored for the opportunity to uplift and showcase this initiative that helps promote gender and racial parity in American theater.”
Hedspeth said “I am proud today that we are celebrating our shero, Lorraine Hansberry. A woman who took pen to paper and said there is a space and place for all of us, especially those of us who look like me and so many of you.”
Taylor spoke about “how this event and partnership brings our mission to life. As a people’s pier, we are dedicated to making all forms of art accessible. Dedicated to showcasing for millions of our guests the diversity and cultural richness that makes us all better for having experienced it. It’s partnerships like this … that are the core of Navy Pier’s mission. We are a platform for our community. I cannot think of a more perfect collaboration between sculpture, poetry, theater and film that honor’s Lorraine’s legacy and uplifts talented voices … I am so grateful that To Sit A While has found a permanent home at Navy Pier where it will receive of millions of guests for years to come.”
Jordan said that this night was the culmination of an eight-year journey with Nottage. She spoke about how The Lillys got started 15 years ago when only 15% of plays featured on the American stage were written by women and less than 3% were written by women of color even though 60% of all plays in America were written by women and of those 20% were women of color.
“The key to gender and racial parity in the American theater lay in raising the presence of female playwrights of color and so The Lilly’s embarked on the Lorraine Hansberry Initiative to address the problem,” said Jordan. “That was eight years ago. This year, for the first time, in the history of our country, female playwrights and female playwrights of color and male playwrights of color have finally achieved parity on the American stage.”
Nottage spoke about Hansberry as one of the most important storytellers of the 20th century and “during the height of the civil rights movement she put the lives of a Black family center-stage with compassion, love and complexity. Her play, A Raisin in the Sun, left an indelible mark on the American cultural landscape. Few people know she was also a visionary thinker, an outspoken activist championing civil rights and LGBTQ+ issues before her premature death at 34.
“The Lorraine Hansberry Initiative was created to celebrate, amplify and protect [her] legacy, helping to ensure that new generation of writers get to put their own truth on the stage. To that end, the initiative launched a fellowship for female and nonbinary playwrights to help pay for their expenses at graduate school. It gives our fellows $25,000/year for each year they are in school and pays for their living expenses in order to protect their precious time to write so they don’t have to take ten jobs just to go to graduate school. I am really proud to say that we have our first year fellows with us Danielle Stagger who just graduated from Yale University and Amalia Oliva Rojas who is finishing her studies at Columbia University this year.”
Nottage also reminded attendees that Hansberry’s statue will mark only the fourth time a woman has been honored in this way in the City of Chicago.
Saar said she is grateful that Chicago and Navy Pier has given her sculpture a place for people To Sit A While to think and share and invite others to do the same thing. She spoke about the five chairs that represent different areas of achievement in her life— The Modernist Chair, The Office Chair, The Stool (represents her lesbian identity and the rights of the LGBTQ+ community), The Ottoman and The Bentwood Chair—and encouraged people to make use of the space to share their thoughts and ideas, read and contemplate the wider world. Saar also mentioned the recently completed DNC Convention where the first Black and South Asian woman, Vice President Kamala Harris, was nominated to be a presidential candidate for the first time in American history as another example of positive change in the United States.
Ratcliff spoke about the Congo Square Theater’s partnership with the Lorraine Hansberry Initiative and The Lillys to bring Hansberry’s legacy back to Chicago and how excited she was to be a part of this endeavor.
The night capped off with a reception in Navy Pier’s Welcome Pavilion and an outdoor screening of A Raisin in the Sun based on Hansberry’s play of the same name at the Lake Stage.
