"Angels in America" Coming to Signature in 2010-2011!

SIGNATURE THEATRE COMPANY’S 2010-2011 SEASON TO FEATURE FIRST NEW YORK REVIVAL OF TONY KUSHNER’S PULITZER AND TONY AWARD-WINNING
ANGELS IN AMERICA
DIRECTED BY MICHAEL GREIF

PRODUCTION MADE POSSIBLE BY MAJOR GRANT
FROM THE ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION

ALL SEATS AVAILABLE FOR $20 THROUGH SIGNATURE TICKET INITIATIVE

Signature Theatre Company (James Houghton, Founding Artistic Director; Erika Mallin, Executive Director) is pleased to announce that the theatre’s 20th Anniversary season in 2010-2011, celebrating author Tony Kushner, will feature the first New York revival of Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning epic work, ANGELS IN AMERICA: A GAY FANTASIA ON NATIONAL THEMES. The production will be directed by Michael Greif with Part One: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES and Part Two: PERESTROIKA presented in repertory. Signature’s Tony Kushner season will also include two more works to be announced.

The production of ANGELS IN AMERICA is made possible by a $750,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as part of a $1.25 Million grant to Signature Theatre Company.

“I'm very excited about my Signature season and of course I'm very honored to have been chosen,” Tony Kushner said. “I've spent some of my best nights watching the work Jim Houghton and Signature Theatre Company has produced. It seemed to Jim and me that this is a good moment to bring ANGELS back to New York, and I'm delighted that Michael Greif has agreed to direct it. Michael and I have worked together and known each other for most of our careers. He's a serious, generous, incredibly smart and superbly talented artist; I love his passionate commitment to actors, to plays, to the theater. I think the Signature's the perfect space for the demands of ANGELS, which is both epic and intimate. I can't wait to see how it all turns out!”

Michael Greif commented, “Mounting Tony’s exquisite play in the intimate Signature Theatre will be an extraordinary challenge but will offer even more extraordinary rewards. I know I’ll be aided by an astonishing group of actors and designers anxious to wrestle with this masterpiece. I cherish my continued collaboration with Tony and the Signature.”

“I still remember the thrill of encountering Tony Kushner’s ANGELS IN AMERICA for the first time nearly 20 years ago and being astounded by the sweep and theatricality of this brave and impassioned piece,” said Jim Houghton. “We are privileged to be celebrating Tony’s work in our milestone 20th Anniversary Season and we’re exceedingly grateful to The Mellon Foundation for its unparalleled support and for making this first New York revival of ANGELS IN AMERICA possible.”

ANGELS IN AMERICA was one of the most critically acclaimed and heralded plays of the 1990s and established Tony Kushner as a major new voice in world theatre. Frank Rich, The New York Times, praised it as “the most thrilling American play in years”. The plays were developed in productions in Los Angeles, San Francisco and London, before opening on Broadway in 1993. Part One, Millennium Approaches, opened May 4, 1993 at the Walter Kerr Theatre and Part Two, Perestroika, opened November 23, 1993, also at the Walter Kerr, with the two parts playing in repertory. Both parts of ANGELS IN AMERICA won Tony Awards in 1993 and 1994 for Best Play and Millennium Approaches won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Kushner adapted the plays for an HBO mini-series, directed by Mike Nichols, which premiered in 2003 and won Golden Globe and Emmy Awards for Best Miniseries.

ANGELS IN AMERICA, A GAY FANTASIA ON NATIONAL THEMES is set in late 1985 and early 1986, as the first wave of the AIDS epidemic in America is escalating and Ronald Reagan has been elected to a second term in the White House. The play’s two parts, MILLENNIUM APROACHES and PERESTROIKA, bring together a young gay man with AIDS and his frightened, unfaithful lover; a closeted Mormon lawyer and his valium-addicted wife; the infamous New York lawyer Roy Cohn; an African-American male nurse; a Mormon housewife from Utah; and a steel-winged, prophecy-bearing angel; as well as the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, an ancient rabbi, the world’s oldest living Bolshevik and a Reagan administration functionary, among many others – all played by a company of eight actors. The lives of these disparate characters intersect, intertwine, collide and are blown apart during a time of heartbreak, reaction and transformation. Ranging from earth to heaven, from the political to the intimate to the visionary and supernatural, ANGELS IN AMERICA is an epic exploration of love, justice, identity and theology, of the difficulty, terror and necessity of change.

Through The Signature Ticket Initiative, which seeks to make great theatre accessible to the broadest possible audience, all regularly-priced single tickets ($65) during the initial announced run are underwritten and will be available for $20. The Signature Ticket Initiative 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.