Phylicia Rashad

Phylicia Rashad will direct Signature Theatre's Our Lady of 121st Street

Tony Award winner Phylicia Rashad replaces Anne Kauffman as director of Our Lady of 121st Street due to scheduling conflicts.

Tom Millward
Tom Millward

Signature Theatre has confirmed that Tony Award winner Phylicia Rashad will direct the upcoming production of Pulitzer Prize-winner Stephen Adly Guirgis' Our Lady of 121st Street, which is scheduled to begin previews at the Pershing Square Signature Center's Irene Diamond Stage on May 1, 2018, ahead of an official opening on May 20 and a limited engagement through to June 10, 2018. Ms. Rashad replaces previously announced Anne Kauffman, who has had to withdraw due to scheduling conflicts.

Ms. Rashad was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 2016. She won a Tony Award in 2004 for her performance as Lena Younger in A Raisin in the Sun and earned a second Tony nomination the following year for Gem of the Ocean. Her other Broadway credits include Violet Weston in August: Osage County in 2009, Big Mama in the 2008 revival of Cat on a Hot Tin RoofCymbeline (2007-8), the 1992 premiere of Jelly's Last Jam, the Witch in Into the Woods (1988), the 1981 premiere of Dreamgirls, and the 1975 premiere of The Wiz. She has previously worked as a director at the Mark Taper Forum and for Steppenwolf Theatre Company, among others.

Synopsis: "After the death of the beloved Sister Rose, a group of her former students return to their Harlem neighborhood to pay respects. But at the Funeral Home, there's a problem—her dead body has been stolen. An irreverently brash and insightful dark comedy, Stephen Adly Guirgis' Our Lady of 121st Street paints a vivid comic portrait of what happens when old friends meet old wounds and how old habits die hard."

Casting and creative team information for Our Lady of 121st Street will be announced at a later date.

Tickets for Signature Theatre's next production - Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo: Homelife & The Zoo Story - are available now for performances from January 30 through to March 11, 2018.

Originally published on

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