Industry NewsSignature Theatre's 2021 Virtual Gala Will Honor Anna Deavere SmithThe event will also feature performances by Dave Malloy and the cast of Cambodian Rock Band.
By
Dan Meyer
April 28, 2021
Anna Deavere Smith
Joseph Marzullo/WENN
Signature Theatre will celebrate 30 years at its 2021 annual gala Three Decades Together, One Future for Us All May 6. The virtual event will feature a tribute to Anna Deavere Smith, who is set to receive the Off-Broadway company's inaugural Signature Outstanding Artist Award. A 2020 gala set to honor the playwright and performer due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Smith is currently a playwright-in-residence at Signature; her works include Notes from the Field and Fires in the Mirror. The latter at the Off-Broadway company in 2019, starring Michael Benjamin Washington. Her Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 to be presented during the 2021鈥�2022 season.
In addition, the gala will include performances by Dave Malloy and cast members from Signature鈥檚 production of Lauren Yee's Cambodian Rock Band: Abraham Kim, Jane Lui, Joe Ngo, and Courtney Reed. Katori Hall, Samuel D. Hunter, Dominique Morisseau, and Lynn Nottage are also set to appear.
Lila Neugebauer directs the program. Gala co-chairs are Bloomberg Philanthropies, Edward Skyler, Citi, and Nina B. Matis and Alan Gosule.
The play by Emil Weinstein is based on the memoir by Abby Chava Stein, an openly transgender woman directly descended from Hasidic Judaism's founder, the Baal Shem Tov.
The piece stars Obie Award winner Jodie Markell as propagandist filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, whose work in service of the Nazis defined the visual identity of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.