Daphne Rubin-Vega & More to Star in MY BROKEN LANGUAGE World Premiere at Signature Theatre

Signature Theatre will present Quiara Alegría Hudes' My Broken Language, the acclaimed playwright's stage adaptation of her eponymous memoir, and her return to Signature for the second play in her Premiere Residency (following the 2016 world premiere of Daphne's Dive). The world premiere production, directed by Hudes, collides monologue, literary reading, music, and movement in its depiction of an author growing up in el barrio in Philadelphia during the 90s, in a Puerto Rican family held together by women: recalling the uplift, the grief, the spirits, the dance. Navigating the margins of many communities, they forge a language all their own. My Broken Language takes place Oct 18-Nov 27, 2022 in the Pershing Square Signature Center's Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre (480 W 42nd St, New York).

My Broken Language continues a momentous moment for the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright: in 2021, Ms. Hudes released the acclaimed book on which the play is based, and her Tony-nominated stage musical collaboration with Lin Manuel-Miranda, In the Heights, reached audiences around the world as a beloved major motion picture. (Hudes penned the book in the Broadway production and the film's screenplay). Hudes has been praised in The New Yorker for creating "an exceptional body of work, at once lyrical and colloquial, playful and spiritual." Lin-Manuel Miranda has described her as "in touch with spirits...a woman who went into playwriting because she sensed that her family stories-those in Puerto Rico, those in Philadelphia-would fade if she did not give them language."

As she focuses on a constellation of women that impacted her life, Hudes stages the act of memory. The author character, from whose perspective My Broken Language's stories emanate, is embodied alternately by five performers. As Hudes describes in her stage directions, there is "no need for them to act, speak, or move like one cohesive character. The point is a multiplicity of voices, bodies, and vibez." The cast includes Zabryna Guevara (Water by the Spoonful, Emergence), Yani Marin (Jack Ryan, Empire), Samora la Perdida (Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, The Winter's Tale), Daphne Rubin-Vega (Rent, Jack Goes Boating), and Marilyn Torres (Water by The Spoonful, Daredevil). The creative team, realizing the play's sensuous, fluid world, and tapping into its interplay between spoken and unspoken languages, includes Ebony Williams (Choreographer), Alex Lacamoire (Music Supervisor), Ariacne Trujillo Duran (Musician), Arnulfo Maldonado (Scenic Design), Dede Ayite (Costume Design), Jen Schriever (Lighting Design), Leah Gelpe (Sound Design), Ann James (Cultural Specialist), Kaitlin Leigh Marsh (Production Stage Manager), Julia Perez (Assistant Stage Manager), Rudi Goblen (Associate Director), and Caparelliotis Casting (Dave Caparelliotis and Joe Gery) (Casting).

Hudes began shaping her memoir in a moment of pause she took from theater, after two decades, to explore other forms of writing. While Hudes initially intended to pen a backstage memoir, she turned completely towards her early life, after she stumbled upon a stirring home video. It was simple: she and other family members were dancing with a sense of celebratory joy. But the video's time stamp was revelatory: it was on the 4th of July in 1991-a year that Hudes had recalled as one of the hardest in her early life-the result of systemic difficulties and experiences of frequent loss.

Hudes says, "To see this dance, this exuberant joy, so fully embodied, and then remember the context that this was the year that happened in-when I attended the funerals of many family members who died before their time-I thought, 'There's a secret to survival in that, and I wanted to understand it and explore it.' I also wanted to share that secret with other readers. It started with dancing bodies, and they revealed that this is a piece about language. The body was one of the primary ways that my multilingual migrant family had to communicate."

The stage adaptation of My Broken Language-also, Hudes' return to theater-stemmed from listening to the audio book and realizing how closely it resembled a monologue. On her book tour, Hudes was further struck by how vividly and seamlessly the language could translate to theater. She explains, "I just got hungry to especially hone in on the material that focused on the body and say, 'let's get this in the bodies and in the spirits of incredible actors and see what can happen.'"

Each scene represented in the play focuses, in multifarious ways, on women's bodies as sites and origins of meaning, expression, and exchange. Whether in the precise ballet of the author's abuela's method of cooking rice; in the intimacy of dyeing her cousin's hair while contemplating the distances between their socioeconomic experiences, smooshing the hair dye into her scalp; the "powerful, dangerous, grotesque" wailing and chest-pounding of the author's aunt mourning her daughter; or the sprawled, faceless nude in Duchamp's Étant Donnés that makes the young museum-going author "stare and rage and fume and fantasize"; Hudes' evocative language constantly instigates a profound exploration into what cannot always be said with words.

In conjunction with the production, and as part of a larger celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month in collaboration with Latinx Playwrights Circle (LPC), SigSpace-the program of eclectic work in The Pershing Square Signature Center's spacious lobby, sustaining it as a free public workspace and social hub for New York City artists-will feature a Latinx Theatre Night Pre-Show Happy Hour with LPC Friday, October 28, 5pm-7pm.

My Broken Language kicks off Signature Theatre's 2022-2023 season, which also features work by Samuel D. Hunter, Sarah Ruhl, and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. While the structure of Signature's seasons-producing several plays by each resident writer-fundamentally brings audiences closer to playwrights, this season particularly offers a personal and profound view into each Resident writers' voice and vision. Often adapting their own work or using the stage to explore the imprint of places and relationships, playwrights in 2022-2023 offer works that pull from various intimate realms of experience-in textured, complex impressions of contemporary American reality.

Ticketing

All performances take place at The Pershing Square Signature Center's (480 W 42nd St) Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre.

Opening Night: Sunday, November 6 at 7pm

For a full performance schedule click here.

All tickets for the first three weeks of the run, October 18 - November 5, are $40, thanks to Signature Access (formerly Signature Ticket Initiative). In an effort to sustain access to affordable tickets, Signature now offers the choice between the subsidized $40 price, or a new option to Pay It Forward for $60 or $80 that includes a donation directly to Signature Access. After November 5, ticket prices increase to $50 - $90, with a Pay It Forward option for $70 - $130.

A new Student Membership Program offers $20 - $30 tickets for the entire six weeks of each production. Extended Access tickets are $40 for any performance for those with a SNAP card, Medicare/Medicaid card or Military/Veteran ID.

Groups of 10 or more receive discounted prices of $40 - 55, $20 for students, and $35 for group leaders and educators. For more information, email groupsales@signaturetheatre.org.

About Quiara Alegría Hudes (Playwright & Director)

Quiara Alegría Hudes is a West-Philly-born-and-bred language grrrl. Her critically-acclaimed memoir My Broken Language was this year's One Book One Philadelphia citywide read. Her Pulitzer Prize-winning play Water by the Spoonful, and Pulitzer finalist play Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue explore the diasporican community in Philly and beyond. For the screen, Hudes adapted her Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights into a major motion picture and wrote Vivo, an animated feature, both with collaborator/composer Lin-Manuel Miranda. Her essays have appeared in the Washington Post, The Nation, The Cut, and American Theater Magazine, where High Tide of Heartbreak was read widely throughout the theater industry. With her cousin, Hudes founded and runs a prison writing project, Emancipated Stories.

About the Cast

Ariacne Trujillo Duran

(Musician). (She/her) Grammy nominee Ariacne Trujillo Duran was born in Havana, Cuba, where she had a career as a concert pianist, singer and composer. At 14, she performed with the top symphonic orchestras in Cuba, while working as a lead singer and pianist at the legendary Cabaret Tropicana. After arriving in NY, Trujillo has performed in many important jazz festivals around the world.With her powerful musical presence and versatility, Trujillo has become one of the virtuoso pianists and vocalists in NY.

 Trujillo's teaching experience includes world renowned Universities such as NYU,Berklee College of Music, Mannes, Lehman College and Icesi, Colombia. She is part of the jazz faculty at NJCU, where she is part of the master's program. Trujillo has performed with legends such as Paul Simon, Paquito D. Rivera, Wynton Marsalis, Steve Gadd, Jonny Pacheco, John Scofield, Diego El Cigala, Alain Perez, Jimmy Busch, Isaac Delgado, Esperanza Spalding, and more.

Zabryna Guevara

(Ensemble). (She/her) Off Broadway: Water by the Spoonful (Second Stage), Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue (Page 73), Chimichangas and Zoloft (Atlantic Theater), El Paso Blue (The Joseph Papp Public Theatre), Santa Concepción (The Joseph Papp Public Theatre), Tight Embrace (Intar Theatre), Now and Then (Intar Theatre), and Bulrusher (Urban Stages). Regional: Hartford Stage, Seattle Rep, The Huntington Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, Intiman Theatre, Two River Theatre, Round House Theatre, CATF, Barrington Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville. Film/Television: "New Amsterdam", "Dr. Death", "Emergence", "Gotham", "Twilight Zone", "Tell Me a Story", "The Handmaid's Tale", "Snowfall," "The Get Down" and more.

Yani Marin

(Ensemble). (She/her) Broadway: Wicked, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (OBC); West Side Story (OBC, 2009 Revival). Regional: Bob Fosse's Dancin' (The Old Globe), Kiss My Aztec (La Jolla Playhouse, Berkeley Rep.), Hair (Hollywood Bowl) The Radio City Christmas Spectacular. Concerts: "The Beyoncé Experience (World Tour)," "A Broadway Celebration at the White House," "Sondheim! The Birthday Concert." Television: The Blacklist, Tommy, Jack Ryan, Empire, Blue Bloods, NCIS LA, Criminal Minds, One Bad Choice and Smash. BFA in Dance from NYU, Tisch School of the Arts.

Samora la Perdida

(Ensemble). (She/they) Off Broadway: Notes On Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members (Soho Rep), The Tempest, The Winter's Tale (the Public) pato, pato, maricón (Ars Nova ANTFest). Regional: Tarell Alvin McCraney's Romeo & Juliet Outside the Box. Film: CRSHD. TEDx Talk: Do Latines Need to Speak Spanish? Finding My Lost Mother Tongue. Alumna of LaGuardia HS, Carnegie Mellon Drama, YoungArts, and Alvin Ailey's Junior Division. All the love to Quiara and my Grrrls ya tu sabe!

Daphne Rubin-Vega

(Ensemble). (She/her) Film/TV: featured as "a Legend" in Tick Tick...Boom!, Daniela in the recent film adaptation of In the Heights, Allswell, Social Distance, and the newest Peter Hedges film Same Storm (to be released this October). Broadway: Two-time Tony Award nominee for portrayals of Mimi Marquez in RENT (OBC), and Conchita in Nilo Cruz's Anna in the Tropics, A Streetcar Named Desire, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Les Miserables. Long standing member of the LAByrinth Theater Company. Miss You Like Hell (The Public), Empanada Loca (Drama Desk Nominee), Two Sisters and a Piano, F*cking A (The Public), Romeo & Juliet (Classic Stage), Jack Goes Boating. All my love to Quiara.

Marilyn Torres

(Ensemble). (She/her) Off Broadway: Agony of the Agony (Vineyard Theater), Bike America ( Mai Yi ). Regional: There's Always the Hudson (Woolly Mammoth), Water By The Spoonful (Old Globe), Breathe Boom (Yale Rep), Downtown Plays (Tribeca), Rumble In the Theater (Hartbeat Ensemble). Film/Television: High Maintenance, Daredevil, For Life, Law & Order SVU, Chris Rock Show, King of Staten Island, Maid In Manhattan. Thank you, Quiara and this beautiful cast for a joyful ride. So grateful to come from where I come from, for my family and ancestors. Ache.

About Signature Theatre

Signature Theatre is an artistic home for storytellers. By producing several plays from each Resident Writer, Signature offers a deep dive into their bodies of work.

Signature serves its mission by hosting distinctive resident playwrights and cultural communities at its permanent home at The Pershing Square Signature Center, a three-theatre facility on West 42nd Street designed by Frank Gehry Architects. At the Center, which opened in January 2012, Signature continues its original Playwright-in-Residence model with Spotlight Residency (formerly Residency 1), an intensive exploration of a single writer's body of work. The Premiere Residency (formerly Residency 5), the only program of its kind, supports playwrights as they build a body of work by guaranteeing each writer three productions over a five-year period. The Legacy Program, launched during Signature's 10th Anniversary, invites writers from both residencies to premiere or restage earlier plays. In 2020, Signature launched SigSpace, to bring free artistic programming to the Center's public spaces and more fully activate Signature's lobby as a free public workspace and social hub for New York artists.

The Pershing Square Signature Center is a major contribution to New York City's cultural landscape. The Center supports and encourages collaboration among artists, cultural organizations and local communities by providing free, public access throughout the space. In addition to its three intimate theatres, the Center features a studio theatre, a rehearsal studio and a public café, bar and bookstore.

Founded in 1991 by James Houghton, Signature Theatre is now led by Artistic Director Paige Evans ​​and Executive Director Timothy J. McClimon. Signature's Resident Playwrights include: Edward Albee, Annie Baker, Lee Blessing, Martha Clarke, Will Eno, Horton Foote, María Irene Fornés, Athol Fugard, John Guare, Stephen Adly Guirgis, A.R. Gurney, Katori Hall, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Samuel D. Hunter, David Henry Hwang, Bill Irwin, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Adrienne Kennedy, Tony Kushner, Romulus Linney, Kenneth Lonergan, Dave Malloy, Charles Mee, Arthur Miller, Dominique Morisseau, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Sarah Ruhl, Sam Shepard, Anna Deavere Smith, Regina Taylor, Paula Vogel, Naomi Wallace, August Wilson, Lanford Wilson, Lauren Yee, The Mad Ones, and members of the historic Negro Ensemble Company: Charles Fuller, Leslie Lee, and Samm-Art Williams.

Signature and its artists have been recognized with Tony Awards, Pulitzer Prizes, MacArthur "Genius" grants, and Lucille Lortel, Obie, Drama Desk, AUDELCO, and Artios Awards as well as the 50/50 Award for Gender Parity in Theatre, among many other distinctions. In 2014, Signature became the first New York City theatre to receive the Regional Theatre Tony Award for its body of work and accomplishments as an institution. For more information, please visit signaturetheatre.org.

The groundbreaking Signature Access (formerly the Signature Ticket Initiative), which in 2019 celebrated its one millionth ticket sold, guarantees affordable tickets to every Signature production through 2032. Serving as a model for theatres and performing arts organizations across the country, the Initiative was founded in 2005 and is made possible, in part, by Lead Partner The Pershing Square Foundation.

To post a comment, you must register and login.