Katori Hall, the Olivier Award-winning playwright of The Mountaintop, will direct a screen adaptation of another one of her works.
Hall will helm Hurt Village, her 2011 play about the dissolution of a public-housing complex and the community it has fostered. It won the Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and was workshopped into a screenplay at Sundance Screenwriters Lab.
The official synopsis 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.”
It is unknown whether the original off-Broadway cast, which included Tony Award winner Tonya Pinkins, will reprise their roles. Shooting is scheduled to commence next summer.
[via Shadow and Act]