Phylicia Rashad discusses her roles as both an actor and director in the theatre. As an actor, her job is to create fully realized human characters that serve the playwright's vision. As a director, she holds the creative vision and ensures all elements come together in alignment with that vision. She also discusses her personal connection to A Raisin in the Sun, having performed it at different stages of her life and career. A key point she makes is that the play is not about civil rights or racism, but about humanity and the universal human desires for family and progress. African-American culture is rooted in spirituality and connection, not in reaction to racism.

1. A conversation with
Director Phylicia Rashad
and Center Theatre Group
Teaching Artist Marcos Najera.
Ms. Rashad, what is your job in the American
theatre?
Well, usually I’m acting. But in this particular
production, I’m directing. As a director, it is my
job to hold a creative vision for the production
and to galvanize all creative energies. That means
designers, crew, actor—to move in alignment with
that vision. Leaving room for creativity everywhere.
There’s a lot of problem solving involved and a great
deal of decision making on every level: What is it
that is being communicated? What do we want to
say? And how do we want to say it? That’s what the
director does.
That’s a big job. In your more usual career, what
would you say your job is when you are an actor?
As an actor, my job is to create and deliver a human
being that moves in alignment with the playwright’s
intention. And the director’s vision. To create a
character—a full three dimensional human being—
that serves the play and the other performers in the
play.
When did you realize you wanted to tell stories about
people as an actor?
When I understood it was communication from the
heart. And that that was what was beautiful. When
I was eleven, I was selected to be the mistress of
ceremonies for a city-wide music festival in Houston,
Texas. So I had to rehearse every day. And when
the time came for the program, I had rehearsed
so much that even though I held the script in my
hand, I didn’t need it. I had learned it by heart. I was
dressed in a very lovely dress and curls in my hair
and pearls on my socks and I was happy about all
that. Being pretty meant a lot to me. Because my
mother and everybody in my family was so beautiful
and I thought I wasn’t.
And standing in that spotlight, all I could see was
the light. And I knew the script, so I just talked to
the light. When it was over and the mothers came
to collect their children, I heard a couple of them
say “There she is! There’s the little girl who spoke so
beautifully! Isn’t she beautiful?” And I thought “Um-
hmm. That’s it! When I grow up, I will play in the
light! And be beautiful all the time!”
But what I didn’t understand and wouldn’t articulate
until many years after, was the beauty that I
experienced had nothing to do with what I was
wearing or how my hair was styled. It was the beauty
of communication from the heart. And that’s why I
love what I do.
And for A Raisin in the Sun, what is your personal
connection to this particular story and this script?
The first time I performed this play, I was a
sophomore in college. And the next time I
performed I was the mother of a ten year-old son.
And then the next time I performed I was [the
character of] Lena Younger on Broadway. So it’s a
long-standing history.
That second production, when I was the mother
of a ten year-old, was directed by Shauneille Perry,
Lorraine Hansberry’s cousin. She is a graduate of
the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts [in London].
And she went to Howard University. She’s a brilliant
director. A brilliant professor of theatre arts and
writer and actor. And so it was something to be
in a production being directed by her because she
understood the characters in a way that no one else
every explained it. She understood the prototypes
from within the Hansberry family.
Oh, that’s really wonderful. Wasn’t it the Hansberry
vs. Lee case [U.S. Supreme Court, 1940], and her
father going to court against Anna Lee that inspired
Lorraine Hansberry to write A Raisin in the Sun?
Yes, that was the inspiration. But the play is not a
civil rights play. This is the mistake that many people
have made because it comes through the era of civil
rights. But that’s not what the play is about. That
happens in the play, but that’s not what the play is
about. The play is not about racism. That’s in the
play. But that’s not what it’s about.
And this is an understanding and a shift that merits
attention from everybody. African-American culture
is not a reaction to racism. That is no culture
at all. African culture is rooted in a spirituality.
In a spiritual connection to nature, to one’s
surroundings, to other people. You understand what
I’m saying, right?
Yes, I think I do.
I’m talking about culture. Lena Younger [the mother
in the play] comes from a time when people still
grew their own food. That’s why she’s trying to
grow that little plant. She was born in 1904. So
let’s be honest about that, let’s be real. But she’s
not living in reaction to those things. What she
is living in reaction to is the love she had for her
family. And the very natural instinct that all parents
have—and that is to see their progeny progress. To
see them established. To see them happy and well.
And specifically for her, to keep her family together.
Because she is a woman who can reach down and
touch a time when her people were not allowed to
have family, and certainly not together. So culturally,
she is rooted in faith and family.
What would you say is the entry point into having
conversations with young people about race today?
That it is what it always was: illusion. And human
beings did not always live this way. They’d have
to go back and study antiquity to see. They’d
have to go back and look at the Persian empire to
see. They’d have to go back to the time of Darius
[the Great]. They’d have to go and really do some
exploration of ancient Greece. They’d have to look at
Snowden’s “Blacks in Antiquity” [Harvard University,
1970]. They’d have to really do some research to
see that there was a time when the King of Portugal
welcomed the Congolese King and called him
‘brutha!’ Until they discovered they could get more
gold sellin’ the Black people than they could from
the Black people. That it was tea, tobacco and sugar
that flipped the switch.
A Raisin in the Sun is a very important play for many
reasons. It’s a great American play. And when
approached from the point of view of its humanity, it
translates exceedingly well for all people everywhere.
I had read A Raisin in the Sun in high school, but
seeing it as an adult Latino man, what struck me
was how much I saw my own family in the show.
That was the whole point! (laughs)
I even saw myself in the little boy [Travis] sleeping
on the couch with the blanket. And I saw my uncles
and my cousins back in Arizona who, I know to this
day, feel like less-than-men because they don’t have
money and the women tried to bring up the family
the best they could. I remember walking out of the
theatre—how shocked I was that that could’ve easily
been my family.
You see, that is the whole point. When you view a
work through the lens of humanity, you can uncover
all those things. But if we look at the play as a ‘race
play,’ or look at the play as a ‘civil rights play’ we
wouldn’t have discovered those levels. Because our
intention would have been different.
Help me with that.
Lorraine Hansberry was writing about people. And
do you know what play influenced her young life
most?
I do not.
Riders to the Sea [by John Millington Synge]. That old
Irish play. We always performed scenes from Riders
to the Sea when were in college! (laughs) Standard!
I mean here we are, a bunch of African-American
people at Howard University performing Riders to the
Sea, performing Ibsen and Chekov! And because we
did those things, we were looking at humanity. So
then why, when we come to a play written specifically
about African-American people, should we do
anything other than the same thing?
Ms. Rashad, do you see your own family in the
Younger family at all?
I don’t see my family’s circumstances in there, no I
do not. But in terms of personality? Yah! (laughs)I
had an uncle who was very dissatisfied with his life
and not happy with anything or anybody. He wanted
more and couldn’t figure out how. You see, [the
character of] Walter Lee doesn’t have the benefit of
Beneatha’s education. Right?
No, he doesn’t.
No he doesn’t. And yet, he can dream big dreams.
And he’s not wrong. He wanted to invest in a dry-
cleaners. And nobody supported him.
And he’s caught in this conundrum because he feels
and sees and understands himself to be a man, and
yet he doesn’t see himself functioning as he sees
other men his age functioning. And he wants to
do that. And he sees no reason why he shouldn’t
do that. And he’s not wrong! He’s not wrong. And
he tells her, he says “Mama, I can’t make you
understand” He says “Sometimes, when I’m drivin’
that man around, I pass these fancy restaurants and
I see guys in there turnin’ deals and they ain’t no
older than me.”
What he is wanting is not wrong. He’s not wrong.
And I’ll tell you something else. In today’s climate,
there’s a whole lot of Walter Lees. And they are not
all African-American.
Some are in my family.
That’s what I’m trying to say. And that’s what this
play is talking about. And that’s the beautiful thing
about theatre. In one’s own culture, within one’s
own ethnicity, you can pose a greater question for a
society, for a nation, for a people, for the world. And
that’s what makes great theatre. ○
“African-American culture
is not a reaction to racism.
That is no culture at all.
African culture is rooted in
a spirituality. In a spiritual
connection to nature, to
one’s surroundings, to
other people.”
CENTER THEATRE GROUP Discovery Guide 7