SOUTHERN LIVING

Most of the nicest breezes of summer are coming courtesy of our beloved air conditioners and ceiling fans, but Leslie Lee’s play, The First Breeze of Summer, winner of a 1975 Obie award, will likely prove bracing. The semi-autobiographical drama, scripted while Lee attended graduate school, concerns three generations of an African-American family in the contemporary South and stars the luminous Leslie Uggams as the family’s matriarch. Director Ruben Santiago-Hudson will help map the genealogy. The drama inaugurates the Signature Theatre’s season devoted to the Negro Ensemble Company, a theater founded by playwright Douglas Turner Ward in 1967 designed “to present live theater performances by and about Black people to a culturally diverse audience.” The Signature’s upcoming presentations will include Home by Samm-Art Williams and Zooman and the Sign by Charles Fuller.

Wed., Aug. 6, 8 p.m., 2008