‘The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window to be presented at the Ti-Ahwaga Theatre

Kicking off their 2024/2025 season, Ti-Ahwaga Community Players, Inc. presents their upcoming production of Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window! 

This probing, hilarious and provocative story follows Sidney, a disenchanted Greenwich Village intellectual, his wife Iris, an aspiring actress, and their colorful circle of friends and relations.

Set against the turmoil of a stormy 1964 political campaign, the play follows its characters in their unorthodox quests for meaningful lives in an age of corruption, alienation and cynicism. With compassion, humor and poignancy, the author examines questions of morality, ethics, interracial relationships, drugs, rebellion, conformity, global responsibility, and the fragility of love. 

The playwright, Lorraine Hansberry, was a Black activist, writer, public intellectual, and artist. When her first play, A Raisin in the Sun, appeared on Broadway in 1959, she became the youngest American playwright, the fifth woman, and the only African American to date, to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play of the Year. The play was a landmark and made it impossible for the American stage to ignore African American creativity and subject matter thereafter.

The players are honored to perform this piece on the 60th anniversary since its Broadway debut (Oct, 15, 1964). 

This production stars new faces to the Arts Center and Ti-Ahwaga veterans alike, including Joe Hoffmann as Sidney Brustein, Jason E. Walsh as Alton Scales, Nina Varano as Iris Parodus Brustein, Stan Zawatsky as Wally O’Hara, Deirdre Nolis as Max, Anna Tagliaferro as Mavis Parodus Bryson, Addison Turner as David Ragin, and Claire Gratto as Gloria Parodus. 

The Sign In Sidney Brustein’s Window will run Friday, Oct. 4, through Sunday, Oct. 20 at the Ti-Ahwaga Performing Arts Center, located at 42 Delphine St. in Owego, N.Y. Friday and Saturday performances begin at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets are available online at tiahwaga.com, or by calling the box office at (607) 687-2130. 

Viewer discretion is advised, as this production contains sexual themes, derogatory language and content about racism, anti-Semitism, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, substance abuse, and suicide. Due to the content of this production, patrons 17 and under should be accompanied by a parent or guardian.