Native Son

The OBIE Award-winning Classical Theater of Harlem (CTH) presents the premiere of Christopher McElroen’s adaptation of Native Son, based on the classic novel by Richard Wright. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, the play centers on the life of Bigger Thomas, a young African American man who is a representative victim of racism, nothing more than a “nigger” in a white man’s world. He is doomed, trapped in a downward spiral that will lead to arrest, prison, or death. Driven by despair, frustration, and poverty, he has no way out of the racism that surrounds him, and after he murders a young white woman in a moment of panic, the world begins to close in on him.