Her award-winning play The Mountaintop is still on Broadway, playing incredibly well to capacity houses daily, and playright Katori Hall is already set to go on her next work, a new project titled Hurt Village, which we've already told you about in past posts.

The gritty drama about life and change in a Memphis housing project has its official cast (Tony Award winner Tonya Pinkins, Amari Cheatom, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Ron Cephas Jones, Saycon Sengbloh and others) and is set to make its world-premiere at Off-Broadway's Signature Theatre Company, to be directed by Patricia McGregor. It'll run from February 7 through March 18, 2012, with an official February 27 opening.

The synopsis for the 2011 Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award, and Susan Smith Blackburn Prize winner reads:

It's the end of a long summer in Hurt Village, a housing project in Memphis, Tennessee. A government Hope Grant means relocation for many of the project's residents, including Cookie, a 13-year-old aspiring rapper, along with her mother Crank and great-grandmother Big Mama. As the family prepares to move, Cookie's father Buggy unexpectedly returns from a tour of duty in Iraq. Ravaged by the war, Buggy struggles to find a position in his disintegrating community, along with a place in his daughter's wounded heart.

Single tickets are now on sale for Hurt Village, and can be purchased by calling the box office at (212) 244-7529 or online at www.signaturetheatre.org.

I should note that Katori Hall was also a Sundance Screenwriters Lab participant this past summer, with her script for Hurt Village; so, does this mean that we can expect a filmed version of Hurt Village sometime in the future?

I say yes! 🙂