Casting Set for Signature’s Revival of Zooman and the Sign

Casting has been announced for the Signature Theatre Company’s upcoming production of Zooman and the Sign by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Charles Fuller A Soldier’s Play. The high-voltage drama is the final production of the Signature’s 2008-2009 season, which celebrates the Negro Ensemble Company. Previews March 3 at the Peter Norton Space, with an official opening set for March 24. The limited engagement is set to continue through Apriil 26, directed by Stephen McKinley Henderson.

The cast of Zooman and the Sign will include Ron Canada Wedding Crashers, Cinderella Man, Amari Cheatom Lower Ninth, A Ballad of Sad Young Men, Rosalyn Coleman Radio Golf, Seven Guitars, The Piano Lesson, Tre Davis <i>Hamlet, The Toilet</i>, Peter Jay Fernandez Cyrano de Bergerac, Julius Caesar, Henry IV, Lynda Gravatt Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, King Hedley II, Jamal Mallory-McCree The Fabulous Miss Marie, Evan Parke The Lion King and Portia The Ride Down Mt. Morgan, Our Lady of 121st Street.

First produced in 1980 and revived in 1994 by the Second Stage Theatre, Zooman and the Sign shows how a random act of violence devastates one family and scares their once-caring community into silence. As a murderous teen terrorizes the neighborhood, a father makes a dangerous appeal which may tear both his family and their neighborhood apart.

The production features set design by Shaun Motley, costume design by Katherine Roth, lighting design by Matthew Frey and sound design by Robert Kaplowitz.

Signature’s 2008-2009 season is an examination of a body of work from the historic Negro Ensemble Company’s collective of writers, whose alumni includes writers such as Steve Carter, Lonne Elder, Charles Fuller, Leslie Lee and Samm-Art Williams, and actors Angela Bassett, Laurence Fishburne, Samuel L. Jackson, Phylicia Rashad, Esther Rolle and Denzel Washington. The company has an extensive theatre training program and in its 40 year history has produced more than two hundred new plays.

Tony Award-winning actor and playwright Ruben Santiago-Hudson is serving as Associate Artist for the season, which has also included Leslie Lee’s The First Breeze of Summer, Samm-Art Williams’ Home and a staged reading of Douglas Turner Ward’s Day of Absence.