BOBBY & LORRAINE, or SOMETHING LEFT TO LOVE
by Quenna Lené Barrett & Paul Michael Thomson
Participating artists: ensemble member Krystel McNeil with Tamsen Glaser, and other artists to be announced.
Lorraine Hansberry did not win a Tony Award for A Raisin in the Sun, the first production by a Black woman to appear on Broadway. But her white ex-husband won a Tony Award for Best Musical fifteen years later, the sole producer of an adaptation that relied on the words Lorraine wrote. In his acceptance speech for Raisin, the bespectacled leftist nervously thanked, “My mother and my father […] who gave me a vision and a view of life in so many ways similar, out of the Yiddish shtetl, to Lorraine Hansberry’s Black view of life.” At the Tony Awards, he was announced as Robert Nemiroff. But Lorraine Hansberry always called him Bobby.
Quenna Lené Barrett and Paul Michael Thomson embark on a journey using archival research and experimental devising to begin writing the courtship, collaboration, and complicated legacy of Lorraine Hansberry and Robert Nemiroff—one, a self-described Black lesbian from middle-class Chicago; the other, a white Jewish Communist, born to Russian immigrant parents. Bobby & Lorraine, or Something Left to Love is not quite biographical, not quite love story, but instead a fierce and incisive reimagining of the artistic, romantic, and political relationship between these two creators. It poses questions about the preservation and profit of Black-penned works by white producers, as well as the intimacy and ethics of artistic collaboration with those you love most.
About Fresh Produce:
We are thrilled to announce the 2025 return of Rivendell Theatre Ensemble’s annual Fresh Produce: New Plays with Women+ at the Core. Originally launched in 2004, Rivendell has long cultivated the notion that thoughtfully planting new artistic seeds wields the richest harvest. Our Fresh Produce series is known for risky, innovative, and compelling new work. During each series, our staff curates an exciting slate of new projects to be nurtured through an intensive, developmental workshop process.
Each project culminates in a public sharing with the opportunity for a moderated dialogue between artists and audience. We hope you will join us as we sow the seeds of original new work once again!
* Our festival mission utilizes the term “women+” to better capture an expansive definition of gender across the spectrum. To read our full gender identity statement, please visit our homepage.
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