 |
Signature Celebrates the Negro Ensemble Company
For the 2008-2009 Season Signature Theatre Company commemorates the achievements of the historic Negro Ensemble Company. Founded in 1967 by Douglas Turner Ward, Robert Hooks, and Gerald Krone, the Negro Ensemble Company provided a home for African-American theatre artists across all disciplines, showcasing and developing uncompromising work that spoke honestly of the African-American experience. Signature will present three plays from the tenure of former NEC Artistic Director Douglas Turner Ward (1967-1987) that reflect company's monumental contribution to American theatre: Leslie Lee's The First Breeze of Summer, Samm-Art Williams' Home, and Charles Fuller's Zooman and the Sign.
Although this will be Signature's first season to focus on a company of writers rather than an individual, Signature Founding Artistic Director James Houghton sees a season celebrating the NEC as a natural extension of Signature's mission to honor and celebrate the playwright. "If you look at the artists whom we've done, they represent a cross-section of the American theatre tradition as it has evolved and developed," says Houghton. "For me, the NEC represents a crucial piece of that evolution, being one of the major forces behind the Black Theatre Movement of the 1960s."
The idea to devote a season to the Negro Ensemble Company was suggested to Houghton by writer, actor, and director Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who directed Signature's acclaimed production of August Wilson's Seven Guitars during the 2006-2007 August Wilson Series. Santiago-Hudson, a former NEC actor, will be in residence at Signature throughout the season as an Associate Artist. "Jim is into preserving cultures and celebrating writers and their bodies of work," says Santiago-Hudson on why he thought of pairing Signature with the historic NEC. "No one has really celebrated the writers of the NEC. There's a huge legacy of work of writers, still alive, who are creating as we're talking."
The three plays of Signature's Negro Ensemble Company Season represent a sampling of the NEC's expansive and diverse body of work. Santiago-Hudson will direct Leslie Lee's multi-generation family drama The First Breeze of Summer, which follows the struggles of the Edwards family and the legacy left to them by Gremmar, their family matriarch. The second play will be Samm-Art Williams' lyrical Home, the story of Cephus Miles, whose journey from the rural South to the city spans a turbulent era of American history including the Vietnam War and Civil Rights movement. Signature welcomes Chicago-based director Ron OJ Parson, who has directed many plays from the classic NEC repertoire, as director of Home. Charles Fuller's Zooman and the Sign is an urban drama depicting the repercussions of a random act of violence on one family and its surrounding community. Stephen McKinley Henderson, who appeared in Signature's Seven Guitars and King Hedley II during the August Wilson Series, directs.
Signature will further explore the NEC's long and prolific production history with the NEC Reading Series, which will feature readings of three more plays from the historic NEC repertoire, read on stage at the Peter Norton Space on select Monday evenings throughout the season. NEC Founder Douglas Turner Ward will also direct a staged reading of his 1965 satirical play Day of Absence, the controversial work that led to the founding of the Negro Ensemble Company.
Ward is pleased that the Negro Ensemble Company Season will showcase a multitude of long-neglected works, some of which have not been staged in major productions since their original presentations by the Negro Ensemble Company. "The frustrating and sad thing about American theatre and culture is that much of what is contributed from black sources unfortunately does not get replicated or kept alive according to its inherent worth, quality and relevance to the culture," he said. "Many of these plays have gone into obscurity, you wouldn't even know about them in drama class. So what you get is a situation where the body of work is not being taught, not being done at the community theatre, not being done at the regional theatre. So that finally [Joseph A. Walker's] The River Niger, which won the Tony Award in 1974, if I mention it you look at me blankly. You've never heard of it. Signature is doing a service in terms of the plays they are doing: a cross-section of black works that take us out of having one spokesman, which tends to be the case even at best."
Houghton adds, "This season is an opportunity to acknowledge a very important time in the development of the American theatre, as we celebrate the historic NEC and its enduring legacy. I know there's an enormous audience out there who needs to be reminded that the NEC existed and continues to exist. Hopefully the Negro Ensemble Company Season will propel a new generation of audiences and artists to make sure that there will always be a home for these works and a future where they are represented in a substantial way."
[back to top]
|
|
