Video: The MCNEAL Company Gets Ready for Broadway

There's no replacement for the sense of community you get when you're doing theater

And at this scale, the stakes are so high, so you feel the onus of honoring the tradition

And I like that. I like feeling a deep responsibility to do something right

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World. Lincoln Center Theater kicks off their 40th anniversary season with McNeil

the new play by Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Oktar. It is directed by Bartlett's share and features a stellar cast

led by Academy Award winner Robert Downey Jr., who's making his Broadway debut

and I caught up with the company during a break in rehearsal. Ad Oktar is probably the best writer I'm aware of right now

and the proof was in the pudding. I knew I was going to commit to this come Hell or Highwater

before I was halfway done reading it. Obviously, the Vivian Beaumont Theater is a place that is so rife with history

that to be bringing something new and fresh to it, which is what it's done at every stage

It's not an old-timey theater. It's always been in the moment, been the front of what was possible in theater

So I think it deserves a new show, a show that's poignant, that subject matter is timely

and that, you know, you got AAD, Bart, this incredible crew. How about even just all the other departments here and the designers and all that stuff

I forgot. I mean, clearly, there was nothing to forget. I'd never done anything at near this scale

So it mind Well excitement can mean many different things right It can mean terror It can mean joy It can be kind of giddiness

It can be excited being with a group of people. I think it's all those things, really

And particularly excited to be back doing theater because I haven't done anything since 2019

There were so many other ingredients in it. I wanted to do a play

I wanted to come full circle with Robert Downey Jr., having work with him. I wanted to be here with Andre Bishop. And then I read the play and I thought

well, this is a world I know nothing about. And can I make this, can I bring it to life? You know

it's not a musical comedy, right? It's not, it's not noises off. I don't know if I've ever

done anything like this before. So it's a challenge. Why shouldn't I take challenges at my age

We are just having a wonderful time. I mean, part of the reason I wanted to do it

was just this group of incredible artists. And, you know, they don't call it a play for nothing

You have to be able to play. And Bartlett is incredible at setting, creating an environment where we get to play

And that doesn't mean you're not taking it seriously and you're not focusing, but you are able to move and pivot and change

And Aad is working the play right there on the floor with us, rewriting, changing

Robert is able to just, he's playful, he's collaborative. There's a lot of generosity with all of these artists

I'm very excited, actually, to be returning to Lincoln Center also and to be working with these incredible actors

So, yeah. Shitting my pants is what I am It extraordinary I don know what I doing here I hope it be okay That how I feel about it But I think the excitement will come But I learning You going to have to help me learn And so she as she is already

I've been a long time fan of A. Ed's writing, especially as, you know, an Indian South Asian. Well, actor, I was looking at a lot of his plays during grad school. I'm such a big fan of disgraced and all his past work. And I think what his writing in this play does so

uniquely is make all these larger, make all this larger commentary about our society

the way we're wrestling with these bigger questions, while still being so dropped into

just the human elements of a scene. He is able to make these larger, really important points

that we as a society and audience have to confront, while also just being so focused on the

relationships and kind of commenting on human nature in such a brilliantly done way. When I first

read the play, I had this idea that AI was something so separate from who we are as people today

how we function, how we live. And what I realized when I read the first run of the play

maybe even before the workshop, was that there's this possibility, which is the scary possibility

that perhaps AI has always been a part of our life, longer, far longer than we've clocked

than we've realized and we've allowed it to, you know, welcome, like, then we've welcomed it into our life

And that this play is tackling that question head on is scary and I feel like it's really timely

And I was really interested in what it was going to like how to have this digital presence how does AI become a character in a play That was very curious to me What do you hope audiences will take away or what kind of conversations do you think they should have

or will have after seeing this? I have an answer that I can speak and the one that I can't

The one that I can speak is to say, well, I hope that they will be moved

and I hope that they will take away some things that they feel they can

can't not wrestle with. And I hope they feel compelled to keep thinking about it and to keep

feeling about it. I mean, the thing about the theater and the thing that AAD does so well is

he brings you into conversations that we are afraid to have that are really dangerous, not only the

technological ones, but the human ones. And so I think audiences will be surprised and elevated

and challenged by all the conversations. And not necessarily walking out. And not necessarily walking

out like, oh, wasn't that fun? That's not the issue. The issue is that they've been brought

to think and alive inside of questions with other human beings in the same room without their

cell phone on, although there's a big cell phone on in front of them called the stage. But it's

pretty fun. It's a pretty, that's the deepest kind of celebratory human experience you can

have. Like we're all sitting on the hillside in Delphi watching, you know, a great play

What are you enjoying the most about working on this show? The community, there's no replacement for the sense of community you get when you're doing theater

And at this scale, the stakes are so high, so you feel the onus of honoring the tradition

And I like that. I like feeling a deep responsibility to do something right