from the
founding artistic director
Dear Signature Family:
As we enter the 2014-15 Season, our fourth in the Center, I am still struck by
the constant hum of activity and steady flow of new faces that bring this building
to life each day. What was once new and unfamiliar now feels like a true home,
not only for Signature’s old friends but for everyone within our ever-growing
theatre community and neighborhood. I’m delighted that the Center will also
be home for the six writers taking part in next season, a diverse and exciting
group whose necessary work gets to the heart of why we do what we do.
We begin the 2014-15 Season with not one but two
conversation with one another is a rare and extraordinary
playwrights—A.R. Gurney and Naomi Wallace—joining
one, and we couldn’t be more excited.
Signature’s Residency One program. Both writers are
known for their substantial, distinctive, and essential
bodies of work. Wallace’s And I and Silence and
The Liquid Plain, and Gurney’s The Wayside Motor Inn
and What I Did Last Summer, are as different as can
be, but each elegantly captures the private moments
of human connection that happen within the larger,
trickier context of American history. From a women’s
prison in the 1950s, to the docks of 18th century
Bristol, Rhode Island, to an inn in Boston and a summer
home on Lake Erie, these four brave dramas represent
the great breadth and depth of contemporary American
playwriting. The opportunity to present their plays in
When Signature’s Residency Five program was launched in
2012, we envisioned a residency that would encourage and
enable playwrights to generate new work. Katori Hall, whose
explosive play Hurt Village premiered here in 2012 and
whose newest play Our Lady of Kibeho will begin performances this November, has done just that. Time and space
have helped nurture Katori’s venturesome new drama about
a young girl whose vision of the Virgin Mary changes her
small Rwandan village forever. Our Lady of Kibeho will also
welcome back Michael Greif, who most recently directed our
production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America in 2010. We
are thrilled to join these two artists together for this world
premiere production. Our Legacy Program continues to
thrive this season, and Signature is honored to present
works by three of our former Playwrights-in-Residence.
Katori Hall in rehearsal
for Hurt Village, 2012.
Bill Irwin,
Tina Landau,
and David Shiner
rehearse
Old Hats, 2013.
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