Play Probes Intellectualism of ‘60s

Playwright Lorraine Hansberry was not yet 35 when she died, but she left an indelible mark on American theater. She was the first black woman to have a play produced on Broadway, and that play, “A Raisin in the Sun,” won the New York Drama Critics Circle’s best play award for 1959.

After Hansberry’s death in 1965, her husband Robert Nemiroff assembled a collection of her dramatic writings, “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” which continues to be produced.

But Hansberry herself completed only one other play in her lifetime, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.” It was produced on Broadway in 1964, and starred Gabe Dell, who won a Tony Award for his performance as Brustein.

Interestingly, “Sign” is not about the black experience at the time. While Hansberry was committed to the black struggle for civil rights, her writings weren’t militant. The play is about intellectuals in Greenwich Village--where Hansberry lived for the decade preceding her death--and their sociopolitical ideas in the early ‘60s.

What does a play that is so period specific have to say to today’s audiences? A great deal, according to a group called New Attitude Productions, which is staging a revival of “Sign” at American Renegade Theatre.

Director Lewis Hauser first became aware of the play’s strengths from Dell, whom he directed in a production of “Luv.” Reading Dell’s manuscript of “Sign,” Hauser was impressed by Hansberry’s insights.

“The Village played a big part in Hansberry’s life,” Hauser noted. “These are the people she knew. All of these things were very strong for her, all of this individualism that was going on at the time. It was the beginning of a cultural revolution.”

The play’s timeless message, Hauser said, is simple: No one should be afraid to be themselves.

Pierson Blaetz, who plays Brustein in the New Attitude production, wasn’t even born when “Sign” first opened in New York. But he sees parallels between that society and today’s.

“Enough time has passed since the ‘60s that we can start looking at that time as a real explosion of ideas--ideas about the individual,” Blaetz said. “You can go to that period and learn something from it. It’s interesting for people of our generation, who weren’t living then, to play around with the ideas that were happening then. One way to do that is to do this play.”

With the same fervor that grips Sidney Brustein in “Sign,” Blaetz feels--even hopes--that kind of change may be imminent for the late 1990s.

“It’s just not enough to watch. It’s really obvious, in looking at my generation and a younger generation, that they’re lacking a purpose. Because of lacking a purpose, I don’t believe they’re fully living, and fully breathing,” said Blaetz.

“One of the great benefits of being in the theater is to be able to walk into another world and try to learn what there is to learn there,” he said. “I’ve never worked on anything that has been so incredibly rewarding, and also incredibly scary.”

* “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” American Renegade Theatre, 5303 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays. Ends Feb. 22. $12. (213) 466-1767 or (818) 953-9993.