L O O K I N G B A C K O N
LEGACY
In the final production of the 25th Anniversary Season, Signature is excited to revisit three plays from three Legacy playwrights – Edward Albee’ s The Sandbox, María Irene Fornés’ s Drowning, and Adrienne Kennedy’ s Funnyhouse of a Negro. Each produced during their playwrights’ original Signature seasons, these three works will be presented together as a single evening for the first time, celebrating Albee, Fornés, and Kennedy’ s profound influence on American theatre. This spring, Signature’ s Artistic Director Jim Houghton took a moment to reflect on the continued relevance of these three playwrights, and the impact they made on Signature’ s history.
Signature: How did you first choose these three playwrights for their original Signature seasons?
Jim Houghton: In many ways, I think Edward Albee’ s season best embodies the Signature mission. At the point when we were coming to existence as a company, in the early nineties, he had been pretty much ignored by New York because he had a couple shows on Broadway that didn’ t fare so well. He was pretty much dismissed after that. But when Signature was finishing up our first season with Romulus Linney, I realized,“ Oh my god, that’ s our first season! We have to do more seasons!” I had met Edward briefly while I was a graduate student at SMU, and so I asked Romulus to arrange for us to get together and for me to propose a season to Edward. We got together and I talked about what I thought Signature was about, what it meant to be a writer at Signature and to create context for work, and why I thought engagement with the artist was important. I was just rambling on in some long diatribe, and Edward interrupted and said“ Let’ s do this.” And that’ s how the third season of Signature Theatre came to be. We ended up doing five premiere plays of his in New York City during the 1993-94 Season – Marriage Play, Counting the Ways, Listening, Fragments, and then a trio of plays: Box, The Sandbox, and Finding the Sun. It amazed me to think that this playwright had five premiere plays waiting to be produced.
And during that season, Edward became family to me. And not just to me, but also to my wife Joyce and my kids Lily and Henry. At the end of Edward’ s season, his career just totally changed. He won the Pulitzer for Three Tall Women. His plays were being produced all over. It was like that season at Signature reminded the theatre community of the depth and breadth and quality of Edward’ s body of work.
I was first exposed to María Irene Fornés’ s work when I was a young actor, and I actually performed in her play Drowning. I think that play is some of the best 15-20 minutes’ worth of writing that I have ever experienced as a performer. I didn’ t know Irene personally when I called to ask her about doing a season at Signature, but I quickly learned that she is a true character – she is both eccentric and incredibly grounded. It’ s what makes her work so visceral in a way. It’ s raw, it’ s immediate, it’ s brave. She doesn’ t fool around. Irene and I talked through her entire body of work, and what we might do for the 1999-2000 Season. We settled on a new play of hers called Letters from Cuba, the New York premiere of Enter the Night, and then Mud and Drowning presented together as a single evening. I’ ve always thought of Mud as a signature work of Irene’ s, and Drowning was a bit of a lesser known play of hers – but it’ s an
I felt that putting Edward, Irene, and Adrienne together in the same night was really compelling in what it says about the roots of our theatre and the legacies these three writers have. But these plays also feel so deeply relevant today.
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