In 2021, just before she flew to Australia to begin rehearsals for the Sydney Theatre Company production of A Raisin in the Sun, Gayle Samuels and her sister were sorting through their father’s belongings. He had died in 2019 and they were throwing some of his things out.

“My sister had found this box of Playbills and she was about ready to toss them and I was like, ‘No! I want to have a look,’” says Samuels, chatting to Limelight in The Theatre Bar at the end of the Wharf.

Gayle Samuels

Gayle Samuels and the Playbill from the 1959 Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun, found in a box of her father’s things. Photo © Joanna Shuen/STC

Samuels’ father was a jazz pianist and loved going to the theatre. “Every show I did, if he was not [in the audience], he would ask me to bring home an extra Playbill, so I was sure there would be several of them in that box.”

To her surprise, among the many programs was a Playbill from the 1959 Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun, starring Sidney Poitier,...