Arvada Center's 'Clybourne Park' takes on race, gentrification with humor

"Clybourne Park" is a Tony Award winning play that takes on the issues of race and gentrification. The script also won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Arvada Center has a production of "Clybourne Park" running in its Black Box Theater. 

The play is about a house and how concerns in a neighborhood can be cyclical. Act I is set in 1959, when the house is up for sale. 

"You watch my family who is selling the house be confronted by neighbors who are like, 'You can't sell to this family,'" said Brik Berkes, who plays Russ in Act 1. 

Playwright, Bruce Norris, loosely based the play on "A Raisin in the Sun," taking a look at how the neighborhood likely reacted when Lena Younger and her family became the first black family to move into the neighborhood. 

"The thing that's so clever about Act I, from my perspective as a Black person, is you get to look in on a conversation that otherwise you would not be privy to, said Ghandia Johnson, who plays Francine in Act I, the family's housekeeper.

In Act II, it's 2009, and the same set of actors are playing completely new characters. Berkes plays Dan, a construction worker who's been hired to tear down the house and build something new. Johnson is now a descendant of Lena Younger and she's fighting to try to save the house from the new owners who are white.

"You watch these issues that arise in 1959 happen almost exactly in 2009 so much so that the playwright has written some of the same line," Berkes pointed out.

"I just feel that even though there are some racially tense moments and some difficult moments, it really is a well written, hilarious play," Johnson explained. 

The play will make you laugh. It will also make you cringe, but most of all it will make you think.

"Laughing at a difficult situation sometimes eases the tension of the situation where you're able to actually absorb it," Johnson said. 

"I hope it opens up dialogue," Berkes added. 

These conversations are playing out in every American city, making "Clybourne Park" as relevant as ever. 

LINK: For Tickets & Information for "Clybourne Park" 

"Clybourne Park" runs through March 30th in the Black Box Theater at the Arvada Center.