Miles for Mary

Miles for Mary is a comedy for the stage, written by The Mad Ones, a New York ensemble that works as a resident artist company at Signature Theatre. Signature Theatre Company presents it as an all-new staging of the ensemble's earlier play, part of the company's 2026-27 season. It is the first time Signature has produced one of the group's plays.

Lila Neugebauer directs. The action is set at Garrison High School in Garrison, Ohio, in 1988, and the subject is a school committee at work: coaches and teachers who have to organize the school's yearly telethon together. The producers have announced an end date for the run and left room for an extension, so check the live calendar for the latest dates.

The play starts with the physical education department getting ready for its annual telethon. Putting it on falls to a planning committee made up of the school's coaches and teachers, and the committee's meetings are where the comedy happens. As the members argue over how the event should be run, the strain begins to wear on how they treat one another.

Six characters make up the committee. Sandra Bulkman coaches track and field and teaches math. David Eagan coaches wrestling and teaches history. Rod Dietrich is an assistant coach who teaches health and phys ed. Ken Wyckoff runs the AV Club and teaches economics, and his wife, Julie Wyckoff-Barnes, who teaches AP English, is new to the group.

The sixth member is Brenda Zadakian, the guidance counselor and the committee's veteran chair. An accident over the summer has sidelined her, so the play opens with her running the meeting by speakerphone.

The Mad Ones make new work as an ensemble, and this script came from the company itself rather than from a single outside playwright. The character sketches in the casting notice read like a staff room in miniature: an idea-driven veteran, a talkative peacemaker, a private and careful newcomer, a high achiever who makes lists. The comedy comes from how these different temperaments handle one shared project.

Miles for Mary had its world premiere in 2016 at The Bushwick Starr in Brooklyn, during that theater's 2016-2017 season. In 2018 it moved to Manhattan for its Off-Broadway debut, a limited engagement at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwrights Horizons, again directed by Neugebauer.

Signature announced the new staging in April 2026 as part of its 2026-27 season and scheduled it for February 2027.