Dramaturgy alumna Arminda Thomas ’96 joins the creative team for Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). The show’s limited run begins previews on February 4, with the official opening date scheduled for February 23. Closing is set for March 19, 2023.
Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Dead for a Dollar) and Oscar Isaac (Moon Knight, Scenes From a Marriage) star in the production, which is directed by Obie Award winner Anne Kauffman. The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window was Hansberry’s second and final play—it premiered in 1964, just weeks before the playwright’s death from pancreatic cancer—and this production marks the first major New York revival since the show’s original Broadway run. The play focuses on a progressive, diverse friend group during the 1960s in Greenwich Village. At the center of the group are Sidney and Iris Brustein, engaged in a fight to see if their passionate, witty, and sometimes cruel marriage can survive Sidney’s ideals.
Arminda Thomas is a dramaturg, director, and archivist. She is a resident dramaturg and producing member of CLASSIX, and a resident dramaturg/curator for New Perspectives Theatre’s On Her Shoulders reading series. She has served as Associate Artistic Director and Resident Dramaturg for the Going to the River Festival and Writer’s Unit, and as an archivist and literary manager for Dee-Davis Enterprises. There, she was an executive producer for the Grammy-awarded audiobook, With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together, and a consultant for the film Life’s Essentials with Ruby Dee. As a dramaturg, Thomas’s other recent work includes: the current Broadway run of Death of a Salesman (Hudson Theatre), Wedding Band (Theatre for a New Audience), and Mirrors (produced by Parity Productions). She has worked with various theatre companies, including New Perspectives, Theatre for a New Audience, Baltimore Center Stage, New Federal Theatre, Classical Theatre of Harlem, and Signature Theatre.
