Photos: Elvis Costello, Paula Vogel, And More Turn Out For LETTERS FROM MAX Opening Night At Signature Theatre!

Signature Theatre presents the world premiere production of MacArthur Fellow Sarah Ruhl's Letters From Max, directed by Kate Whoriskey, based on the book by Ruhl and Max Ritvo (Milkweed Editions), running through March 19, 2023. See photos from the show's opening night celebration featuring the show's star Jessica Hecht, rock icon Elvis Costello and more!

Ruhl adapts the 2018 epistolary book Letters From Max: A Poet, a Teacher, a Friendship into a lyrical hybrid work that flows between full-hearted letters, poetry, music, and dialogue. With Letters From Max, Ruhl shares a personal correspondence, in the various forms it assumes between two people fervently pursuing, and offering one another the generosity of, higher expression. In these notes, verses, and utterances, her former student, the late poet Max Ritvo (Four Reincarnations), openly discusses terminal illness and tests poetry's capacity to put to words what otherwise feels ineffable.

Ruhl, whose accomplished body of work includes Eurydice and Pulitzer Prize finalists In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) and The Clean House, begins her Signature Spotlight Residency-for mid-career and established playwrights, amplifying artists' voices by producing a series of their works as three Signature shows-with this work of arresting candor and intimacy.

All performances take place at The Pershing Square Signature Center's (480 W 42nd St) The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre.

Photo Credit: Johnny Nunez/Getty Images for Signature Theatre