Les Blancs

• The Woman: The abstract representation of the growing conflict in Africa and the growing conflict within the heart of the main protagonist, Tshembe. She appears only to Tshembe as a decorated spear-bearing warrior; dancing rhythmically to war drums. She appears to him on two different occasions when he is confronted with the choice to join the conflict or not. She first appears in the first scene dancing to the drums and raising a spear above her head. Tshembe confronts her directly at the end of a scene in which he has a tense conversation with Charlie Morris. He describes her to Charlie as “Joan of Arc,” so he could understand. In the end he rebukes her saying, “I HAVE RENOUNCED ALL SPEARS!”
• Tshembe Matoseh: The main protagonist of the play. He is the son of a Kwi chief and is returning to attend his father’s funeral who had died before he could arrive. He is returning from England where he immigrated and gained a formal English education. He is married to an English woman and they have had a child together. Throughout the story Tshembe tells everyone, including the Woman, that he simply wants to honor his father and return home to his family. However, the conflict in Africa to include the Woman will not let him go and he is inevitably dragged into the mounting revolution.
• Abioseh Matoseh: Tshembe’s brother. He has fully embraced the culture of the west as he is training to be an ordained priest. He hopes that taking on this lifestyle will allow him to share in the power held by the white settlers. He argues with Tshembe over the well-being of their younger brother Eric; Tshembe wants Eric to return to England with him, while Abioseh wants Eric to come with him to potentially join the priesthood. The story uses Abioseh as a symbol of full assimilation as he has denounced his heritage to the point of betraying his own people. Tshembe symbolizes his inevitable joining of the revolution by executing him for his betrayal.
• Eric/Ngedi: The teenage, biracial brother of Tshembe and Abioseh, the result of their mother's rape by Major Rice. He is a rash young man with an affinity for alcohol usually provided to him by Dr. Willy DeKoven, Eric is an impressionable youth who is also caught up in the mounting conflict. He was the only one of the brothers to be with their father, the chief when he died. He confronts Tshembe about this when they meet after his older brother’s time in England and they have an amusing conversation about Tshembe’s wife. Essentially orphaned, Eric is caught between his two older brothers who argue over who shall take responsibility for him.
• Madame Nielson: A sharp and intelligent older woman and the wife of Reverend Nielson who started the Mission forty years prior. Many of the members of the Kwi tribe look up to her as a mother figure to include Tshembe and his brothers. When they were all young, she taught them and acted towards them as a surrogate mother. She is outraged by the encroaching colonial military, led by Major George Rice and pushes Tshembe into joining the revolution. This leads to her untimely death during the initial hostilities.
• Dr. Willy DeKoven: A dark complexioned doctor in his mid to late forties who has been part of the Mission for twelve years. He carries himself with a lofty air as he is hyper aware of how terrible the situation is and has essentially numbed himself to it. Though he has an affinity for alcohol he is one of the wisest characters in the play. He shows himself to be very brave and compassionate while also seeming like he has given up. He acknowledges that the Mission, though working with good intentions is actually part of the problem. Lorraine uses Dr. DeKoven as a device for background on the setting: such as that colonial delegations that visited when he had first started working there. He reacts towards Major Rice and his military forces with vehemence and bitter passive-aggressiveness.
• Dr. Marta Gotterling: A young and naïve doctor who is passionate about her job. She is the newest member of the Mission who has only been there five years. Besides the Woman she is the first character shown on the stage. She has an outspoken pride for the creative thriftiness of the Mission Hospital, which we find out from Dr. DeKoven is a naïve obliviousness of the discrimination against the African natives as a white hospital only seventy-five miles away is top of the line. She finds her life to be very fulfilling and she is very protective of the hospital and the Reverend. She has a couple of conversations with Charlie Morris, which are rife with clever quips and sexual tension. Nothing ever comes of it though.
• Charlie Morris: A middle aged journalist from America whom we see first in the opening scene with Marta Gotterling. He is there to report on the growing conflict. He is very idealistic and as such, he is very naïve to the growing conflict between the African natives and the English settlers. He has a nasty penchant for overgeneralizations that Tshembe dismantles in a conversation about the truth behind hate and racism. He looks down on the hospital’s poverty while also being fascinated by it. He carries himself with an air of enlightened superiority while also being very willing to help. He reacts towards Major Rice with blatant defiance. He and Tshembe have a few tense conversations but they manage to find common ground before he leaves.
• Major George Rice: The antagonistic element of the play. He is the leader of the colonial military forces. He represents both the oppressive colonial regime and is a symbol for blatant racism as he is always using racial slurs. He honestly and openly refers to the whites and superior to the Africans and treats them like idiot children. We see this clearly when he is treating Peter like a servant. He is deeply suspicious of anyone who sympathizes with the African natives. Lorrain uses Major Rice to fulfill a few different roles. One is that of off screen exposition (i.e. the action that takes place off-stage), and the other is that of a focus of rising tension. Every scene featuring Major Rice leads to escalation of the conflict in some way; whether blatantly accusing Dr. DeKoven of harboring “terrorists” or by simply informing the characters of an 8:30 curfew. Although he may be the Antagonist, he is doing everything that he believes is right for the people of Africa. As he mentions in his monologue in Act 1, he is doing this because the times are in demand of a leader against the "terrorists".
• Peter/Ntali: The middle-aged cousin of Tshembe and his brothers and a member of the resistance. While speaking with Tshembe he speaks completely normal but while dealing with white characters such as Charlie and Rice he uses varying degrees of speech stereotypical of natives; such as replacing “Th” with “D” for example. He confronts Tshembe while he is attempting to sort cloth and tries to encourage him, not only to join the resistance but to lead it. He also informs Tshembe that his father was part of the resistance before his death. Whether this is true or not, it has a profound effect on Tshembe. In the end Peter, dies at the hand of Major Rice and a firing squad. This is one of the turning points that leads to Tshembe joining the resistance.
• Ngago: A charismatic war leader first seen in the scene in which Peter confronts Tshembe. The sixth scene of act two is composed completely of Ngago’s monologue. This monologue serves two purposes: one is it is a war cry for the people narratively speaking, the other is to inform the reader (or audience member), that the escalation has reach a turning point. The monologue takes place immediately after the death of Peter.

The title is a reference to Jean Genet's play The Blacks: A Clown Show. The play is about the experience of settlers, natives, and one American journalist in an unnamed African country in the waning days of colonial control.

Hansberry originally planned to have a female protagonist, but revised the play so the only black woman has no name and no lines, referred to only as "woman".[1]

The 1970 Broadway production at the Longacre Theatre was nominated for two Tony Awards, for Best Costumes and Lili Darvas was nominated for Best Featured Actress in a Play her performance as Madame Neilsen. James Earl Jones received a Drama Desk Award for his performance.[2]

A production of Les Blancs directed by Yaël Farber played at the National Theatre, London between 22 March and 02 June 2016.

In March of 2018, California State University of Sacramento's Department of Theatre & Dance did a production of Les Blancs in their Playwright's Theater that ran for two weeks.

Published 4 years after Hansberry’s death, compiled and edited by her ex-husband Robert Nemiroff from incomplete drafts, Hansberry considered Les Blancs her most important play. Les Blancs is the only play of many left behind after her death that Nemiroff finished and adapted into a final version.

Hansberry attributed her interest in colonialism as beginning when she watched newsreel footage of the Italian conquest of Ethiopia, and her mother telling her that the Pope had ordained the invasion. After taking courses on African history and culture underneath WEB DuBois, Hansberry went on to work for Paul Robeson’s newspaper Freedom. Here she worked alongside Africans and African Americans working towards liberation, influencing the ideas that would later become Les Blancs.

Hansberry began writing Les Blancs in 1960 after having what her husband called a “visceral response” upon seeing the U.S. production of Jean Genet's Les Negres (The Blacks). Feeling the Frenchman’s view of colonialism as too rooted in a romantic exoticism of Africa, she hoped to write a more realistic account of African colonialism and the issues of power, politics, and identity that came with it.

Hansberry spent years working on Les Blancs, constantly rewriting and editing, taking it with her to and from hospital visits as her health deteriorated. Hansberry took what would later become Act I scene iii to the Actor's Studio Writer's Workshop where, encouraged by the response, she witnessed the only performance of Les Blancs to happen in her lifetime. Using Nemiroff as her sounding board and editor, she almost completed the play before her death. Using notes from her collection, discussions they’d had about the work together, and at times creating some of his own dialogue to fill the gaps, her husband spent years working on it before release.

Hansberry used the independence movements of Ghana and Kenya as inspiration for her background, using Jomo Kenyatta as a template for the revolutionary leader in the play.

Written as part of the Black Arts Movement, Les Blancs grapples with the ideas of pan-Africanism and the global nature of colonialism seen in many of the other works coming out at the time.[3]

Hansberry, Lorraine: “ Blancs: the Collected Last Plays.” Random House Inc. New York, NY: 1972. Print Borrios, Olga: “The Intellectual Spear: Lorraines Hansberry’s Les Blanks,” Revista de Associacion Espanol de Estudios Ingleses y Norteamericanos, 1996. (1-2) pgs 28-36. Journal Article.

• Les Blancs at the Internet Broadway Database