Will Eno News

Signature Theatre Company announced yesterday seven productions for its inaugural 2012 season at Signature Center, the company's new Frank Gehry-designed permanent home opening in February 2012. Signature Center will allow the Company to expand its programming, introduce new initiatives, and build audiences. Featuring three intimate theatres, a Studio Theatre, rehearsal studio and a shared lobby with café and bookstore, Signature Center will be both a theatre community hub and a neighborhood destination.

At a special press event on the construction site of the new venue, Signature Theatre loyalists Edward Norton, Edward Albee and more were on hand to discuss the future plans of the company. Broadway Beat was there and brings you coverage below!

Signature Theatre Company (Founding Artistic Director James Houghton; Executive Director Erika Mallin), announced today seven productions for its inaugural 2012 season at Signature Center (480 West 42nd Street near 10th Avenue), the company's new Frank Gehry-designed permanent home opening in February 2012. Signature Center will allow the Company to expand its programming, introduce new initiatives, and build audiences. Featuring three intimate theatres, a studio theatre, rehearsal studio and a shared lobby with café and bookstore, Signature Center will be both a theatre community hub and a neighborhood destination.

Two River Theater Company, under the leadership of Artistic Director John Dias and Managing Director Michael Hurst, continues its season with the world premiere of Madeleine George's Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England, directed by Ken Rus Schmoll.

Final Casting is announced for the Common Tongue Theatre's 1st New York reading of Neil Wechsler's Yale Drama Award Winning play, GRENADINE.

A post-performance conversation moderated by David Henry Hwang is set following the September 9 performance of INVASION!, Jonas Hassen Khemiri's Obie Award-winning play receiving an encore production this fall, presented by The Play Company at The Flea Theater (41 White St.) in Tribeca, it has been announced by Kate Loewald, Founding Producer, and Lauren Weigel, Executive Producer, of The Play Company.

Lila Dupree of The Common Tongue Theatre will present the first New York reading of Neil Wechsler's Yale Drama Award winning play, GRENADINE.

The Helen Merrill Playwriting Award Ceremony will be held Monday, September 26, 2011, 5:30pm - 7:30pm (Awards given at 6:15pm) at the Algonquin Hotel, 59 West 44th Street.

The Flea Theater presents Horizon Theatre Rep's production of the rarely-seen play BENITO CERENO - written by the late Robert Lowell and based on the Herman Melville novel of the same name -- Off-Broadway at the Flea Theatre (41 White St.) in Manhattan, with previews set to start September 22 prior to an official press opening on September 25.

The Bats are back in The Flea Theater's world premiere production of SHE KILLS MONSTERS, a comedic romp into the world of fantasy role-playing games, written by Qui Nguyen and directed by Robert Ross Parker.

Signature Theatre Company has just announced the playwrights participating in the Theatre's new Residency Five initiative, part of the expanded programming that will be presented at Signature Center (480 West 42nd Street, near 10th Avenue), the Company's new Frank Gehry-designed home. Annie Baker, Will Eno, Katori Hall, Kenneth Lonergan and Regina Taylor will be the program's inaugural playwrights.

Lila Dupree of The Common Tongue Theatre will present the first New York reading of Neil Wechsler's Yale Drama Award winning play, GRENADINE.

Academy, Tony and four-time Emmy Award nominee Bob Balaban; acclaimed 'White Collar' television star Matt Bomer; Emmy Award-winning journalist Campbell Brown; celebrated playwright and gay rights activist Larry Kramer; two-time Academy Award-nominated, multiple Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning, two-time Tony Award-winning actor John Lithgow; Tony Award nominee and Broadway Impact Co-Founder Rory O'Malley; and Emmy Award winner and three-time Golden Globe Award nominee Bradley Whitford will appear in the world premiere of '8' on Broadway, joining the previously announced Anthony Edwards, Morgan Freeman, Cheyenne Jackson, Christine Lahti, Rob Reiner, Yeardley Smith and Marisa Tomei. The production is an unprecedented account of the Federal District Court trial in Perry v. Schwarzenegger (now Perry v. Brown), the case filed by AFER to overturn Proposition 8, which eliminated the right to marry for gay and lesbian couples in California.

J. Buck Jabaily will be leading a seminar in devised work at Single Carrot Theatre.

On Sunday, October 2, 4pm and 7:30pm, American Opera Projects will present the world premiere of Model Love, a humorous staged song-cycle about contemporary relationships with jazz and rock elements by composer J. David Jackson based on texts by British comedian Henry Normal, and the one-act opera monodrama Nora, In the Great Outdoors, music by Daniel Felsenfeld and libretto by Will Eno, that continues the final scene of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House moments after Nora abandons her family.

The Helen Merrill Playwriting Award Ceremony will be held Monday, September 26, 2011, 5:30pm - 7:30pm (Awards given at 6:15pm) at the Algonquin Hotel, 59 West 44th Street.

THE PEARL THEATRE COMPANY (J.R. Sullivan, Artistic Director) presents a new production of Eugène Ionesco's THE BALD SOPRANO.