Video: Laura Linney & Jessica Hecht Are Getting Ready to Return to Broadway in SUMMER, 1976

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World

Manhattan Theatre Club is celebrating its 50th season, and Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht are returning to the stage

in Pulitzer Prize winner David Auburn's new play, Summer, 1976. Under the direction of Daniel Sullivan

it will begin performances on April 4th at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, and I caught up with them and MTC's artistic director, Lynn Meadow

during a break in rehearsal. Well, welcome home to Manhattan Theatre Club. How does it feel

It always feels good to be here. Always. You know, this is the theater I've worked at more than any other

And so it's familiar, and I know the people, and they've watched me for decades now

It's been decades that I've been working here. So it's always, it's great fun

It feels like coming home. I've been, this is my fourth show here. My first one was over 20 years ago, and it just feels like no time has passed, and it's wonderful to be back

What makes it so special working here at MTC? I'm coming back into a community of artists who I'm

know really well, who I've worked with before, who I trust. And I know that MTC will put everything

behind the show that they have. You know, you just feel like you're in a place where you're completely

supported. Well, first of all, I want to congratulate you on 50 years, MTC. What does that number

mean to you live? That's a number. It's a big number, and it's a number that's filled with

so many fantastic artists who have come and worked under our auspices. People I've invited in

and who have stayed and come back, brand new people. So it's a very long list of people who are household names now

but who began when you had no idea who Nathan Lane was, and Timitee Shalame and Holly Hunter

and now you know their names. And then every year you're going to meet new people here

So 50 years goes by quickly when you that busy and you that dedicated to what you doing Well let talk about when you first got this play when you first read it what made you say yes I have to do this I feel like the play speaks to me on such a deep level

because in 1976 I was 11 years old, and my mother was going through this consciousness raising

literal consciousness raising, and the play brings up a lot of feelings

that I observed my mother go through, and I feel it's written on a

very, very deep, like, cellular level for me. And the friendship is so, it's so detailed

Dave writes so that your whole emotional life is put into the language in a meticulous way

So it's kind of amazing to speak this play. What were your initial reactions

I'm fascinated by the whole story of summer of 1976. What attracted you to the play besides being written by David

Well, I was, I love. like the idea that it would sort of investigate this relationship

between these two women what happens to it, how strong it is

why it changes, I won't say it doesn't become undone, but it does change

Just the psychology of the piece that I found very interesting. Yeah

Let's talk about what you admire the most about Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht and being in the rehearsal room with them working on your play

Oh, God, I don't think I've ever had a more satisfying or exhilarating experience in a rehearsal room

I was looking around the other day thinking, it just doesn't get better than this than having these two

incredible actors thinking about your play, working on your play. You know, they both bring a really tenacious intelligence to it

They both do a huge amount of thinking and research. Laura comes in with pictures of where she thinks her character might have lived the things she might have seen on her daily walks She goes very deep and they both bring an enormous amount of empathy to it

And they seem to love helping each other discover the play, just as the two characters help each other discover things

So there's a very lovely symmetry there. Okay, well, Dan gave me actually my first real job

I was an understudy in the Heidi Chronicles. So my original memories of Dan, my..

early memories are watching him actually engage with Wendy Wasserstein and and that that moment in time

was very formative for me but I've done two other Shakespeare plays with Dan I did Julia

Caesar and I did King Lear and he he has an incredible mind there's no other way to say it he has the

ability to listen so carefully Dan and to give you these very very um

detailed, like surgical direction to kind of open who you are in moments in a way that I don't think I've had before

And I am really so grateful that he would offer me another chance to work with him

It's very meaningful for me. We didn't know what was going to happen during COVID

I thought it was all the carpet was pulled out from all of us. I mean, just being back in a rehearsal room, creating art again, what this means to you

Well, just that, you know, New York Theater has survived those really frightening years

You know, when they shut down Broadway, I was seeing the inheritance that day

And we'd gotten out of the theater and the news went around that Broadway had shut down

And I remember thinking, oh, this is much worse than anybody knows. Because Broadway does not shut down

It doesn't. I have worked through floods and blizzards and Christmases and like Broadway does not care what going on outside the building It does not stop So when I heard that the whole thing was down I thought oh boy this is

And then I wondered, like, who made the call? Who made the producers shut down

Because they don't like to do it. I mean, they just don't do it

So it was a signal to me that we were in for something really

really unusual. So the fact that it's back and people are going back to the theater and is

you know, it's a huge relief and also sort of fortifies your belief and your deep knowledge that

you know, theater does not go away for anything. It is going to come back, you know

no matter what tries to stop it, whether it's a political regime or a pandemic or cultural

malaise, you know, it will always, there's a need for it. you know, there's a need for the arts

There's a human need for these things. So it's just reconfirming that everything is sort of back

As a playwright, what do you hope an audience walks away with after seeing this play

I hope they have a lot of fun, for one thing, in the company of these two actors for 90 minutes

I think it's a funny play, so I hope they enjoy that. And I hope that they think about their own friendships

the meaning of the important friendships in their lives, how they've changed them

how they feel that their lives have changed as a consequence of the important people in their lives

And I think, I didn't answer that very well, but I think there's also, you know

I think it's also about looking back on an earlier time in your life

from a vantage point of maturity, thinking about your younger self and the decisions you made and trying to figure out how you got here from there