Clybourne Park, the award-winning play about gentrification, is coming back to DC this summer, and Greater Greater Washington is organizing a group outing to the show on July 28. We can think and talk about what gentrification means to DC at that performance, and also tonight at a panel with Veronica Davis.

The play draws on the 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun, where an African-American family, the Youngers, try to buy a house in the white Clybourne Park suburb of Chicago just as racial restrictions on homeownership are crumbling.

Clybourne Park shows the same house from the perspective of the white family that sold it to the Youngers and the community’s treatment of that family. The second act jumps to the modern day, when a young white couple has bought the very same house, representing another wave of demographic change as what’s now a predominantly black neighborhood stands on the cusp of gentrification.

The play ran at the Woolly Mammoth theater last year, and I enjoyed it tremendously. Woolly brought it back this year, and since then it’s won both the Pulitzer and Helen Hayes awards.

We’ve arranged a special Greater Greater Washington night on July 28. All tickets to that performance are 15% off if you use the code 1186 when you buy tickets online or on the phone. In addition, we’ll have a happy hour in the Woolly’s lobby. Everyone who buys a ticket with the code gets $1 off beer or wine. We’ll gather starting at 6, and the show begins at 8.

You can also start learning and talking about gentrification even sooner — tonight, in fact. GGW contributor Veronica Davis is participating in a panel, “The Gentrification of Chocolate City — Reality vs. Perception,” hosted by the Greater Washington Urban League. It’s at 6:45 pm at the NPR building, 635 Massachusetts Ave NW (Metro: Gallery Place).

Tomorrow midday is another interesting panel, “Better Transportation By Design,” discussing how design can help create a better high-speed rail program. It’s part of the Van Alen Institute’s “Life at the Speed of Rail” event announcing winners of a design competition around HSR.

It starts at 12:30 at the National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW (Metro: Judiciary Square). It’s free but RSVPs are requested at rsvp@vanalen.org.

Monday is Arlington’s CaBi expansion meeting; if you can’t go, you can submit your suggestions for locations.

And don’t forget about our Greater Greater Washington trip to the Anacostia Community Museum and Art Gallery on July 10. There’s still some room so RSVP here.