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September 26, 2007
SIGNATURE THEATRE COMPANY
PRESENTS THE WORLD PREMIERE OF
QUEENS BOULEVARD (the musical)
BY 2007-2008 PLAYWRIGHT-IN-RESIDENCE CHARLES MEE
DIRECTED BY DAVIS McCALLUM
CHOREOGRAPHY BY PETER PUCCI
NOVEMBER 6-DECEMBER 30
OPENING NIGHT IS DECEMBER 3
TICKETS ON SALE OCTOBER 2
Signature Theatre Company (James Houghton, Founding Artistic Director; Erika Mallin, Executive Director) presents the world premiere of QUEENS BOULEVARD (the musical) by 2007-2008 Playwright-in-Residence Charles Mee. Directed by Davis McCallum and choreographed by Peter Pucci, QUEENS BOULEVARD (the musical) begins performances on Tuesday, November 6 at Signature Theatre Company's Peter Norton Space, located at 555 West 42nd Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues). Opening Night is Monday, December 3.
Through The Signature Ticket Initiative, which seeks to make great theatre accessible to the broadest possible audience, all regularly-priced single tickets ($65) are available for $20 during the regular runs of each production for the entire season and continues through Signature's 20th Anniversary Season (2010-2011). The Signature Ticket Initiative is made possible by the lead sponsorship of Time Warner, Inc. Generous support for The Signature Ticket Initiative is provided by Margot Adams, in memory of Mason Adams.
The cast of QUEENS BOULEVARD (the musical) includes Amir Arison (A Very Common Procedure, MCC), Satya Bhabha (St. Ann's, The Flea Theatre), Michi Barall (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Public Theater), Marsha Stephanie Blake (The Crucible), Bill Buell (Inherit the Wind), Demosthenes Chrysan (Homebody/Kabul, Trinity Rep), Geeta Citygirl (founder, artistic director of Salaam Theatre), Emily Donahoe (The Glass Menagerie, Berkeley Rep), William Jackson Harper (Thicker Than Water, EST), Jodi Lin (The Joy Luck Club, Pan Asian Rep), Arian Moayed (Masked, DR2), Debargo Sanyal (Women of Trachis, Target Margin), Jon Norman Schneider (Durango, Public Theater), and Ruth Zhang (Tiananmen, Musical Theater Works).
QUEENS BOULEVARD (the musical) features musical supervision and arrangements by Michael Friedman, music direction by Matt Castle, scenic design by Mimi Lien, costume design by Christal Weatherly, lighting design by Marcus Doshi, sound design by Ken Travis and video design by Joseph Spirito.
On his wedding day, a new husband is determined to find the perfect gift for his bride. While she waits at home, he searches for the mythical Flower of Heaven and is thrown into a series of colorful adventures on the streets of his neighborhood in Queens, New York. Inspired by a classical Indian dance drama, Queens Boulevard (the musical) celebrates love, community and life.
BIOGRAPHIES
CHARLES MEE (2007-2008 Playwright-in-Residence) has written Big Love, True Love, First Love, bobrauschenbergamerica, Hotel Cassiopeia, Orestes 2.0, Trojan Women 2.0, Summertime and Wintertime among other plays - all of them available on the internet at www.charlesmee.org. His plays have been performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, American Repertory Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, the Public Theatre, Lincoln Center, the Humana Festival, Steppenwolf, and many other places in the United States as well as in Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Vienna, Istanbul. Among other awards, he is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work is made possible by the support of Jeanne Donovan Fisher and Richard B. Fisher.
DAVIS McCALLUM (Director) New York credits include: Quiara Hudes' Elliot: A Soldier's Fugue (P73 at The Culture Project; Pulitzer Prize Finalist), The Turn of the Screw, Jane Eyre (The Acting Company), Unbound: The Journals of Fanny Kemble, The Belle's Stratagem, West Moon Street (Prospect Theater Company), and Noah Haidle's The Dakota Project and Women & Criminals (HERE). Regional: The Belle's Stratagem (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); Romeo & Juliet (Playmakers Rep, Chapel Hill); Sarah Ruhl's The Clean House (Cleveland Playhouse); his own adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac (Georgia Shakespeare); Twelfth Night (American Shakespeare Center); As You Like It (Shakespeare Theater/ACA); Mee's Big Love, Haidle's A Long History of Neglect, Ruhl's Melancholy Play (McCarter Theater/Princeton University); four summers at New York Stage & Film. International: the British premieres of Ruhl's Eurydice and Doug Wright's Watbanaland (MacOwan Theatre), and the world premiere of Peter Morris's Marge (Edinburgh Fringe). He was the Killian Directing Fellow at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (2003)
and a Drama League Directing Fellow (2001), and recently received an NEA/TCG Career Development Fellowship for Directors (2007). He was a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab (2001), the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab (2003), and the Jack O'Brien Directors Lab at the Old Globe (2007). He trained at LAMDA and studied at Princeton and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
PETER PUCCI (Choreographer) Off B'way: People Be Heard, After Ashley, The Agony and The Agony, The Late Henry Moss, True Love, Eyes for Consuela; Regional: Yale Rep: Safe in Hell, The Cherry Orchard, Miss Julie, The Black Monk; Westport Playhouse: A Marriage Minuet; The Magic Theater: The Late Henry Moss; Great Lakes Theater Festival: Romeo and Juliet; North Shore Music Theatre: Letters from 'Nam; Baltimore Center Stage/Berkeley Repertory Theatre: Fall; The Shakespeare Theatre: The Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night; The McCarter Theater: Mrs.Packard, Hamlet, Fool for Love, The Cherry Orchard, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Learned Ladies; Hartford Stage: Summer and Smoke, Eight by Tenn, Macbeth, Camino Real; National Tour: The Civil War; TheatreWorks USA: Romeo and Juliet; Baltimore Opera: Samson and Delilah; Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center: Renard Dance Commissions: Pucci Plus Dancers; Ballet Hispanico; Joffrey Ballet; Colorado Ballet; Ballet Arizona; Ballet Pacifica; Pittsburgh Ballet; Pilobolus Dance Theatre; Artist in Residence, Manhattanville College
SIGNATURE THEATRE COMPANY (James Houghton, Founding Artistic Director; Erika Mallin, Executive Director) Signature Theatre Company, founded in 1991 by James Houghton, exists to honor and celebrate the playwright. Signature makes an extended commitment to a playwright's body of work, and during this journey, the writer is engaged in every aspect of the creative process. For the past 16 years, the Company has devoted an entire season to the work of a single playwright, including re-examinations of past writings as well as New York and world premieres. By championing in-depth explorations of a living playwright's body of work, the Company delivers an intimate and immersive journey into the playwright's singular vision. Signature has presented entire seasons of the work of Edward Albee, Lee Blessing, Horton Foote, Adrienne Kennedy, Maria Irene Fornes, John Guare, Bill Irwin, Romulus Linney, Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard, Paula Vogel, August Wilson, and Lanford Wilson. Signature remains deeply committed to these season-long residencies, and during the company's tenth and fifteenth anniversaries, Signature introduced an additional residency, the Legacy Program. The Legacy Program invites past playwrights-in-residence back to Signature through two series: the Signature Series, which presents "signature," or more well-known works; and the Premiere Series, which presents New York and world premieres.
Since 2005, Signature has been committed to presenting world-class theatre at an affordable price through The Signature Ticket Initiative, which will offer subsidized $20 tickets through the Company's twentieth anniversary season in 2011. The seventeenth through twentieth seasons will include the work of Charles Mee, The Negro Ensemble Company, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Tony Kushner, as well plays by Edward Albee and other past playwrights-in-residence as part of Signature's Legacy Program. Signature, its productions and its resident writershave been recognized with a Pulitzer Prize, 20 Lucille Lortel Awards, seven OBIE Awards, eight Drama Desk Awards, 10 Drama League Awards, and six AUDELCO Awards among many other distinctions. The National Theatre Conference recognized the company as the 2003 Outstanding National Theatre of the Year.
PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE AND TICKETS
The performance schedule for QUEENS BOULEVARD (the musical) is Tuesday at 7PM, Wednesday through Friday at 8PM, Saturday at 2PM and 8PM, and Sunday at 2PM and 7PM. Tickets are available beginning October 2 at 12 noon by phone (212) 244-PLAY (7529), online at www.signaturetheatre.org, and in person at the Box Office (555 West 42nd Street).
ALSO THIS SEASON AT SIGNATURE THEATRE COMPANY
PARADISE PARK by Charles Mee (World Premiere)
February 12-April 6, 2008, Opens March 2, 2008
Directed by Daniel Fish
Welcome to Paradise Park, an amusement park that opens up into all of America and beyond. Meet the inhabitants of this bizarre carnival of life, including a ventriloquist, his dummy, and a teenage girl on the run. From Futureworld to Londonland, the Grand Canyon to Fred's Polynesian Dive Shop, step right up to this wild ride of fruit cake tosses, underwater ballets, square dances, and star gazing, too.
EDWARD ALBEE'S OCCUPANT
by 1993-94 Playwright-in-Residence Edward Albee
May 6-June 29, 2008, Opens May 29, 2008
Signature caps off its 2007-2008 season with a Legacy Production as part of its Signature Series, in which former Playwrights-in-Residence return to revisit their landmark works. Originally produced at Signature in 2002, in a limited engagement, Edward Albee's Occupant is a portrait of acclaimed sculptor Louise Nevelson-a quest to capture a charismatic and complex artist and persona. What is the relationship between creator and creation? Who was Louise Nevelson? Only she knew.
UPCOMING SEASONS
Signature's 2008-2009 Season will be an examination of a body of work from The Negro Ensemble Company's collective of writers, whose contributions have helped shape America's theatrical heritage. Ruben Santiago-Hudson will be the Associate Artist for the season.
Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks (Venus, Topdog/Underdog), who turns American history on its head with her bold and lyrical riffs on race, literature and politics, will be Signature's Playwright-in-Residence for the 2009-2010 Season.
Signature's 20th Anniversary season (2010-2011) will conclude with Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner (Angels in America; Caroline, or Change), one of the most celebrated and renowned contemporary writers of his generation.
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Signature productions and programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
This event is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.
Special thanks for The Harold & Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust for supporting the development of new American plays at Signature Theatre Company.
Contact:
Chris Boneau / Steven Padla (212) 575-3030, spadla@bbbway.com
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