Signature Theatre Company's 2014-15 Season to Highlight A.R. Gurney and Naomi Wallace

The Signature Theatre Company has announced that they will broaden its 2014-15 Residency One program to feature two playwrights: A.R. Gurney and Naomi Wallace. The off-Broadway company has traditionally highlighted a single playwright as part of the program. Signature will also produce works by Sam Shepard, Charles Mee and Athol Fugard as part of its Legacy Program, as well as a new play by Signature’s Residency Five playwright Katori Hall.

The U.S. premiere of Wallace’s And I And Silence, directed by Caitlin McLeod, will open the season this August at The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre. The play tells the story of two imprisoned teenagers, one black and one white, who form a perilous bond in 1950s America.

A new production of Gurney’s The Wayside Motor Inn will play at The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre August through September. Set outside of Boston, the play examines the tenuous space between loneliness and connection as ten people struggle with the circumstance that have brought them to the Wayside Motor Inn.

The Residency One program continues in February 2015 with the New York premiere of Wallace’s The Liquid Plan at the Alice Griffin, directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah. The play follows Adjua and Dembi, two runaway slaves who plan a daring run for freedom.

In May 2015, Signature will open Gurney’s What I Did Last Summer at the Irene Diamond Stage, about a woman who fights to save the bonds of her family as her husband is overseas near the end of World War II.

Signature’s Legacy Program, which features works of past Signature Playwrights-in-Residence, will include the U.S premiere in November 2014 of A Particle of Dread by Sam Shepard, directed by Nancy Meckler and starring Oscar nominee Stephen Rea at the Alice Griffin, Charles Mee’s Big Love directed by Tina Landau in February 2015 at the Irene Diamond, and a new play written and directed by Athol Fugard in April 2015 at the Romulus Linley.

The season will also include the world premiere of Katori Hall’s Our Lady of Kibeho with Michael Grief at the helm at the Irene Diamond in November 2014. The new play is part of the company’s Residency Five program, which provides a group of playwrights with the full range of the company’s resources for a period of five years to create and produce new works.