Sherie René Scott, Lili Taylor, Lois Smith and Hallie Foote have signed on to appear in Horton Foote's A Trip to Bountiful and John Guare's Landscape of the Body, the first two plays of Signature Theatre Company's upcoming 2005-2006 season.
The Foote (The Traveling Lady, The Young Man from Atlanta) play, which will launch the theatre's 15th Anniversary Signature Series season, will be presented from November 15th through January 8th, 2006 at the Peter Norton Space (555 W. 42nd Street). Harris Yulin (who acted in Hedda Gabler, The Price and others) will helm the piece, whose protagonist is Carrie Watts, who "longs to return to her childhood home of Bountiful,
TX, where she hasn't been in 30 years. Despite her failing health, she
grows more determined to escape from the tiny Houston apartment she
shares with her soft-spoken son and watchful daughter-in-law. Finally
she gets her chance to head homeward, and it is the journey of a
lifetime," according to production notes. Foote will play Jessie Mae Watts while Lois Smith has been cast as Carrie.The tragicomic Landscape of the Body by Guare (The House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation), will be directed by Michael Greif (Jane Eyre, Rent) and will star Scott and Taylor as the two sisters who become enmeshed in murder. "1970s Greenwich Village hosts a slew of mysterious and seemingly
isolated events that connect a group of people on a nightmarish quest
for the American Dream. Through twists in time and with some help from
a singing narrator back from the dead, Guare weaves an amazingly
entertaining tale of their tragic and comic collisions that force them
to discover what it is like to be left with or blessed with nothing but
themselves." The play will run at the Peter Norton Space from May 28th to May 21st, 2006.
Foote's New York credits include A Little Family Business, The Day Emily Married, The Carpetbagger's Children (also penned by her father Horton Foote), The Last of the Thortons, Laura Dennis, Night Seasons and The Widow Claire. Smith received Tony Award nominations for her performances in Buried Child and The Grapes of Wrath. Other Broadway credits include Stages, The Iceman Cometh, and the original production of Tennesee Williams' Orpheus Descending.Primarily a musical theatre actress, Scott received a Tony Award nomination for her performance in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, in which she currently stars as Christine Colgate. Her previous credits include Aida, Rent, Greaseand The Who's Tommy on Broadway, as well as The Last Five Years and Debbie Does Dallas off-Broadway. Taylor, who appeared in the 1997 Broadway revival of Three Sisters, received an Obie Award for her recent off-Broadway turn in Aunt Dan and Lemon; other credits include The Dead Eye Boy and What Did He See? On screen, she has been seen in such films as High Fidelity, The Haunting, Ransom, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, Short Cuts, Say Anything and Mystic Pizza; she is also familiar to TV viewers as Lisa on "Six Feet Under."
Tickets to both A Trip to Bountiful and Landscape of the Body are $15. For tickets call (212) 244-7529. For more information, visit www.signaturetheatre.org.
