Santiago-Hudson Will Strum Seven Guitars For Signature

By Kenneth Jones
20 Mar 2006

Ruben Santiago-Hudson
Ruben Santiago-Hudson
Photo by Aubrey Reuben

Ruben Santiago-Hudson has been tapped to direct the Off-Broadway Signature Theatre Company production of August Wilson's Seven Guitars, Aug. 1-Sept. 24.

The actor won a 1996 Best Featured Actor Tony Award for Seven Guitars, and told Playbill's Harry Haun that he got August Wilson's blessing to direct and preserve the playwright's works. He also appeared in Broadway's Gem of the Ocean (by Wilson) and the musical Jelly's Last Jam.

No casting has been announced for Signature's revival of the play, which was nominated for a 1995 Pulitzer Prize. The respected resident Equity company is devoted to one playwright over the course of one season.

"Hope and heartbreak abound in Pittsburgh's Hill district as seven people share frustration, joy and loss in 1948," according to Signature, which will devote 2006-07 to the late Pulitzer Prize-winner Wilson, who died in fall 2005.

In the play, "Floyd Schoolboy Barton, an aspiring blues musician, returns home to seek his fortune and reclaim his woman; a sick old man longs for an heir to carry on his name; and three single women cope with betrayal and lost dreams. Like seven musical instruments, each one strikes a singular note in a discordant world."

Before Seven Guitars, in May, Santiago-Hudson will shoot a movie in New York with Kevin Costner, Demi Moore and William Hurt.

Next up at Signature on West 42nd Street is a new production of John Guare's Landscape of the Body, starting March 28.

For more information, visit www.signaturetheatre.org.