{"value"=>"<p>Lorraine Hansberry's third and final full-length play was Les Blancs, Robert Nemiroff stated that Hansberry considered Les Blancs to be potentially her most important play, and originally hoped that it might precede The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window to the stage. She began Les Blancs (originally titled The Fungus) in 1960, reworking it until 1964, and was influenced by Jomo Kenyatta during the writing of this play. Steven Carter, one of her bibliographers, considered it \"one of the most scathing and enduring indictments of colonialism\". The title was chosen as a pun on Jean Genêt's drama, Les Nègres in which blacks were portrayed as exotic and abstract.</p> <p>More than half of these files consist of numerous versions of the play script. Hansberry and Nemiroff collaborated on the writing, with Hansberry's drafts containing annotations and edits by both. Hansberry's death precluded her completing the script, and in 1966 Nemiroff finished a preliminary draft. Nemiroff enlisted the assistance of many individuals in the preparation of a number of the drafts, among them actor and playwright Ossie Davis, and producers Konrad Matthaei and Alexander H. Cohen. The scripts with revisions by these three collaborators are included in the collection. There are also files pertaining to Nemiroff's attempts to secure producers and directors for the play prior to the involvement of Cohen's planned presentation of the play on Broadway in 1969.</p> <p>In November 1970 Les Blancs was performed on Broadway, opening at the Longacre Theatre. The drama received six critics' nominations for best new play of the season, but closed after the first season. Nemiroff eventually restored the text to its intended form; and in February 1988 the completed play was given its \"premiere\" at the Arena Stage in Washington, D. C. Many of the scripts in this subseries include Nemiroff's annotations; there are also several rehearsal scripts as well as script revisions of the complete play and of individual scenes. Les Blancs was produced by SEW Productions in San Francisco (1986), Arena Stage in Washington, D. C. (1988) and the Huntington Theater Company on the campus of Boston University (1989). The production material for each of these three major productions has been filed with the appropriate production including the stage manager's scripts, programs, reviews, public relations material, and casting and contact information.</p> <p>Contained within the files is correspondence and related information about other repertory as well as non-repertory American productions (1979-1988.) Also included are souvenir programs for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which featured Les Blancs in its lineup for 1988. A file discusses foreign performances (1966-1968) and a program represents a Manchester, England staged performance held in 2001. Reviews for other productions can be found here, as well as letters commenting on or critiquing the play. Les Blancs was published by Random House and Samuel French, Inc., both in 1972; the typescripts with Nemiroff's corrections appear in the collection.</p>"}