Playwright and director Joe Calarco takes on the new Resident Director/Director of New Works position Signature Theatre.
Signature Theatre has been a frequent collaborator for stage veteran Joe Calarco since he first directed the D.C. premiere of “Side Show” for the Arlington-based theater company in 1999. Since then, Calarco has directed 16 shows at Signature, including world premieres of his plays “The Absence of Spring” and “Walter Cronkite is Dead.” Now Calarco will be calling Signature home as he has been appointed to the new position of resident director/director of new works.
We got the chance to speak with Calarco about his new position and why there is nowhere else he’d rather be.
What are you looking forward to most in this new position?
“I do a lot of new work anyway in my career and for me to be able to find those new voices, it’s what I love most, and I feel like being here is an even better conduit to more writers.”
What does this opportunity with Signature mean to you?
“It’s great. It’s been an artistic home for me for 15 years already and so for it to now officially really be home is fantastic. It’s a theater I love and an area I love. … I believe in what they do, I’ve always believed in what they do. I feel like we have a shared vision. I love their daring [productions], and it’s the perfect place for me to be.”
What is it about the Metro-D.C. area theater scene that has kept you here?
“The D.C. area scene is huge. It’s really on equal par with Chicago. New York is New York, but I still think there is as much theater here as there is any other city in the United States. … There’s so much theater here it’s astounding. How many great, quality theaters there are here? I think there are more nationally known theaters here than anywhere else. You have Signature, Arena, Shakespeare, Folger, you have Studio—those are all well known theaters nationally.
“I tell people all the time when they ask me about D.C., [to] move [here], there’s more than enough theater [in the area].”
“It’s a very supportive community of each other, which you don’t always find. So that’s really lovely, the community really supports each other. So there’s an abundance of great theater and theater that does different things from each other. … You are getting a huge, varied palette of the kind of theater that is out here, which I really think the only other cities that have that are Chicago and New York in terms of the range of the kind of the theater that is done and the quality of it.” —Michael Balderston
(February 2015)
