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Video: Oscar Isaac & Rachel Brosnahan Talk (Finally) Bringing THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN'S WINDOW Back to Broadway
May 17, 2024
Last night, Broadway celebrated the final opening of the 2022-23 season, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, which is now running at the James Earl Jones Theatre. In this video, watch as the company checks in with BroadwayWorld ahead of their first Broadway bows!
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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World
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Following a critically acclaimed sold-out run at Bam, Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan are coming to Broadway
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in Lorraine Hansberry's The Sign in Sydney Brewsteen's Window, directed by Ann Kaufman
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It begins performances on April 25th at the James Earl Jones Theatre
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and I caught up with all of them here at Figaro in Greenwich Village
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Well, first of all, welcome back to Broadway. You're about to make your Broadway debut, my friend
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How excited are you? Yeah, that's right. I'm very excited. Yeah, and I think the fact that it's so unexpected
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and so not willed into existence, that there's something that there's a flow to it happening
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that I just feel completely not in control of, and there's something that's beautiful and terrifying about that
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How cool is it? He's making his Broadway debut. Yes, and I'm the old wizened hag who's been here before
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It's pretty cool. And none of us expected that this, project would have another life at all, let alone to be taking a show like this that hasn't been seen on Broadway since the 1960s back and
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Were you to be making your Broadway debut? It's very cute. This is a special project for both of you. You know, we fell on love with this at Pam. What's made this so special for both of you
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Well one just the athletic nature of the show both physically and spiritually to engage with this incredible piece of art that Lorraine left us to investigate
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and to be part of bringing it to reviving it and to bringing it to people that have never heard of it even
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It's been really, really special to see how many young people have come to see the play
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And so in making this transfer, it's exciting that so many more folks will have the opportunity
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who may not have known about this play, who may not otherwise have been exposed to this play
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And it's also the kind of piece that just requires you to submit completely to it
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And that's been a really thrilling and scary exercise. And that's kind of the dream to get to do both of those things at the same time
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The relevancy of this play. This could have been written yesterday. Lorraine could have written this
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Yes, absolutely. I mean, that's the thing. Everyone calls her prescient. But I actually think she just understood how history works
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And she understands people so well. So she understands cycles. So even though she is speaking about things that hadn't happened yet
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in that way, she's prescient. But in terms of the sort of mechanics of interpersonal dynamics
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she just understands human beings. Yeah it feels like we still having so many of these conversations Some scenes at the play feel like we just dropped into the living room of someone down the street And that thrilling and terrifying
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And yeah, she was grappling with some huge questions and we get to wrestle with them ourselves
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and wrestle this play into submission every night. Is that amazing for you when you think this takes place in the 60s and I'm like, wait a minute, we're in 2023
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Yeah, it's wild. It's not a museum piece. It's incredibly vital and relatively vital
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relevant right now and I think the mixture, I think that has something to do with its success
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right now is that it needed to be revisited now. There's one part that's like, how could
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nobody have put this up sooner? But there's something about the present moment right now
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There's also a reckoning that's happening as well. And there's a, there's a courage in hearing
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her ask these tough questions and have these people talk the way they do and have these people
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publicly transgress the way they do, and yet she has empathy for them and treats them as human beings
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You know, you do film and TV, but you always come back to the stage. Tell me why, what you
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love the most about doing live theater and being here on Broadway. It's my first true love, and
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and it so hard And I bow down to people who live in this world 24 It so hard And that kind of challenge of getting to work with some of the greats and on some of these great pieces
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And the community, the community being in conversation with the audiences. I mean, it's just, it's really special and alive in a way that's totally different from the film and TV stuff
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Yeah, I mean, as a, you know, it's an expression. actionistic art form acting
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You know, it's not communicative, it's expressive. And it's on stage where the actor really has
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full access to all their expressive capabilities. And so I think to be able to do that
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and work with these incredible masterpieces, some forgotten like this one, it's, yeah
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there's nothing else like it. The importance for you of having this play on Broadway now
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I mean, it's kind of beyond my wildest dreams. I basically said at BAM's opening, welcome to my
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retirement, you know, because I thought that I'd had everything that I wanted, you know. The fact that
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this is back on Broadway after being off for 60 years is, and the fact that I get to to be a part of
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it is, again, I'm pinching myself, my head's exploded, I have no way of describing how I feel
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