artists
& Residencies
A home for storytellers.
Through our Signature Residencies, we’ve offered more than 37 artists a home. For each resident playwright, we commit upfront to producing at least three plays: a body of work.
Edward Albee • Annie Baker • Lee Blessing • Heather Christian • Martha Clarke • Will Eno • Horton Foote • María Irene Fornés • Athol Fugard • John Guare • Stephen Adly Guirgis • A.R. Gurney • Katori Hall • Quiara Alegría Hudes • Samuel D. Hunter • David Henry Hwang • Bill Irwin • Branden Jacobs-Jenkins • Adrienne Kennedy • Tony Kushner • Romulus Linney • Kenneth Lonergan • Dave Malloy • Charles Mee • Arthur Miller • Dominique Morisseau • Lynn Nottage • Suzan-Lori Parks • Sarah Ruhl • Sam Shepard • Anna Deavere Smith • Regina Taylor • Paula Vogel • Naomi Wallace • August Wilson • Lanford Wilson • Lauren Yee • The Mad Ones • Members of the historic Negro Ensemble Company: Charles Fuller, Leslie Lee, and Samm-Art Williams
novemBer 2025: Featured Playwright
HEATHER CHRISTIAN
RESIDENT ARTIST
Signature Productions:
ORATORIO FOR LIVING THINGS (2025)
HEATHER CHRISTIAN is a Drama Desk and two-time Obie Award-winning composer/librettist/performer making music-centered shows and rituals. Recent shows include her own work Terce: A Practical Breviary (Prototype Festival/HERE Arts Center), Oratorio for Living Things (Ars Nova), Prime: A Practical Breviary (Playwrights Horizons Soundstage), I am Sending you the Sacred Face (Theater in Quarantine, virtual theater), and Animal Wisdom (Bushwick Starr, now a feature film co-produced by ACT and Woolly Mammoth, coming to Signature in spring 2026), in addition to being a lead artist on devised works Mission Drift (National Theater, London) and The World Is Round (BAM). She is also the composer and lyricist of upcoming, Broadway-bound adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, written with Lauren Yee, which premiered at Arena Stage in DC in summer 2025. Recent Film and TV composition: A Good Girls Guide to Murder (BBC and Netflix), Teenage Euthanasia (Adult Swim) The Shivering Truth (Adult Swim), The Craft: Legacy (Blumhouse), and Lemon (Dir. Janicza Bravo). She was named one of Time Out NY’s Downtown Innovators To Watch, was given a special citation by the New York Drama Critics Circle for musical innovation in 2024, and has been awarded the Richard Rodgers, Stephen Schwartz, and Jonathan Larson Prizes. She’s released 11 records, has taught at NYU and Princeton, operates her own recording studio in Beacon, NY, and can be seen in concert as Heather Christian & The Arbornauts.
Signature Residencies
Spotlight Residency
An intensive residency (formerly Residency 1) for established playwrights, the Spotlight Residency offers a deep dive into a writer’s body of work through productions of three or more plays, both new and reimagined.
Premiere Residency
An exploratory residency (formerly Residency 5) geared towards creating new work, the Premiere Residency supports the development and production of several new plays by each resident playwright.
Launchpad Residency
Signature’s Launchpad Residency is an incubator program for early career playwrights from historically underrepresented communities, offering multi-year residencies and holistic support. Signature’s current launchpad residents are Melis Aker and Julián Mesri.