The Williams Project and Intiman Theatre present

The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window

By Lorraine Hansberry

Directed by Ryan Guzzo Purcell

February 7 - 25, 2023
Erickson Theatre - 1524 Harvard Ave Seattle, WA 98122

Join Intiman Theatre and The Williams Project for their co-production of The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window by Lorraine Hansberry, directed by Ryan Guzzo Purcell.

Hansberry is best known for A Raisin in the Sun, the first play written by a Black woman to be produced on Broadway. Hansberry was the youngest American playwright, the fifth woman, and the first Black American to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play of the Year, and Raisin was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play in 1960. The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window was her second play to open on Broadway, and this production marks the first time it has been professionally produced in Seattle.

The two companies are thrilled to be working together again, after Intiman presented The Williams Project’s Orpheus Descending in 2015 to rave reviews.

"An extraordinary play, a drama so infused with emotional intelligence, linguistic treasures and the human conditions of dread and longing that it keeps you bolt-upright in your seat."

– The Chicago Tribune

About the Play.

It’s Greenwich Village in 1964, and Sidney Brustein’s living room is the place to be. The neighborhood bohemians gather here to drink, listen to records, and argue about politics, art, and sex. Soon, Sidney stumbles into owning a local newspaper and the arguments become more heated. With a marriage on the rocks, no money, and friends advocating for different causes, this aging idealist is forced to decide what he truly believes. Brimming with humor and pulling no punches, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window asks us all: how much are you willing to sacrifice to live your ideals?

Learn more about the production in American Theatre Magazine and Crosscut

About Lorraine Hansberry.

When Lorraine Hansberry’s (1930-1965) landmark play A Raisin in the Sun appeared on Broadway in 1959, she became, at twenty-nine, the first Black woman to be produced on Broadway and the youngest American, the fifth woman, and the first Black playwright to win the New York Drama Critics Circle award for Best Play of the Year. She was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play in 1960, and in 1961, the film version of A Raisin in the Sun won a special award at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for a Screen Writers Guild Award for Hansberry’s screenplay.

In 1965, Lorraine Hansberry died of cancer at age 34. In the six years between the triumph of her first play and her death, she was extraordinarily prolific. Her second play to be produced on Broadway, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, closed the day she passed away. To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, an autobiographical portrait in her own words adapted by her former husband and literary executor Robert Nemiroff, was posthumously produced in 1969 and toured across the country. In 1970, Les Blancs, her play about the inevitability of struggle against colonialism on the African continent, ran on Broadway to critical acclaim. Hansberry was a left-wing political radical, a passionate advocate for the Civil Rights Movement and activist for racial justice, and a lesbian who participated in the earliest days of queer organizing. Throughout her career as a playwright, she wrote articles and essays on literary criticism, racism, sexism, homophobia, world peace and other social and political issues, and her work left a lasting impact on multiple liberation movements. At her death, she left behind file cabinets holding her public and private correspondence, speeches and journals, and various manuscripts in several genres: plays for stage and screen, essays, poetry, and an almost complete novel. (Biography courtesy of and adapted from the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust, www.lhlt.org)