Les Blancs

Les Blancs
Written by	Lorraine Hansberry
Characters	The Woman Dr. Marta Gotterling Peter (AKA, Ntali) Charlie Morris Ngago Dr. Willy DeKoven Major George Rice Madame Neilson Eric Tshembe Matoseh Abioseh Matoseh Minor characters: African Villagers, Warriors, Soldiers, Prisoners, African Child
Date premiered	November 15, 1970
Place premiered	Longacre Theatre, New York City
Original language	English
Subject	Africa, colonialism, revolution
Setting	unnamed African village

Les Blancs is a play by Lorraine Hansberry that debuted on Broadway in 1970. Hansberry considered the play to be potentially her most important work.^[1]

Plot

Tshembe is a black intellectual who has been living in Europe. He returns to Africa for the funeral of his father, who had founded a resistance movement against colonial rule. Tshembe must decide whether to get involved in the insurgency.

Production and reception

The title is a reference to Jean Genet's play The Blacks: A Clown Show. The play is about the experience of settlers, natives, and one American journalist in an unnamed African country in the waning days of colonial control.

Hansberry originally planned to have a female protagonist, but revised the play so the only black woman has no name and no lines, referred to only as "woman".^[2]

A new production of Les Blancs will play at the National Theatre, London, from March 2016.

References

1. 'Lorraine Hansberry, Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays
2. McDonald, Kathlene (2012). Feminism, the Left, and Postwar Literary Culture. Univ. Press of Mississippi, ISBN 9781617033018

External links

• Les Blancs at the Internet Broadway Database