Boucicault-O’Casey-Hansberry: Tracing a Line of Influence

In 1959, Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway after a successful tour. This remarkable performance featured black cast, and staged generation that was beginning to find intellectual sources of race pride. By contrast, exactly 100 years earlier, 1859, ‘great dramatic “sensation”’ New York stage had been Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon, set plantation which describes blackness as shameful. form subject matter, these two plays appear have little common, but this essay traces connection between two. is this: Irish playwright Sean O’Casey felt inspired by reading performing work Boucicault, and, turn, provided ‘point departure’ for Hansberry when she scripted her best-known play. examining moments connection, examines significant if counter-intuitive line influence.