Signature Theatre Company

Profile

Proof that single-mindedness can be a good thing, the Off Broadway Signature Theatre Company has carved out a successful niche with a series of one- and five-year residency programs dedicated to the work of one living playwright. Founding director James Houghton established the company in 1991 as a laboratory of sorts for playwrights-in-residence (Horton Foote and John Guare among them) as each writer is given a mini-retrospective capped by a premiere. Audiences benefit by getting to experience the full scope and depth of a contemporary dramatist’s work while sitting in exceptionally intimate venues: The Frank Gehry-designed Pershing Square Signature Center, which opened in 2012, has three theaters, two with 191 seats and one with 294. — Caroline Kinneberg