Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967) was an African-American poet, journalist, playwright, novelist and librettist, and a significant figure in the Harlem Renaissance. His writings dealt with social issues of the time which have an uncanny resonance with today, both in America and around the world.
What Happens To A Dream Deferred? is the opening line to one of Hughes's and America's most famous poems – Harlem - written in 1951. The poem goes on to ask, Does it dry up/ like a raisin in the sun? This third line inspired the title of a famous stage play and movie, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, which dealt with American racism and history as played out in the lives of a Black family trying to purchase a house in an all-White part of Chicago in the 1960s.
The poem also inspired the title of this presentation by Nigerian-born actor and singer Tayo Aluko who has taken his one-man plays Call Mr. Robeson & Just An Ordinary Lawyer to venues around the globe to great acclaim. He is accompanied by local jazz bands in dramatic performances of selections of Hughes's poetry and prose, with songs and instrumental music from the Harlem Renaissance era to the 1950s.
Click here to see programme for US première performance, Hofstra University, NY, February 2020